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Our Mission

To connect people with plants and the beauty of living landscapes.

Our Vision

A community that understands, values, protects, and is enriched by the world of plants.

The Garden opened in 1985, but our story begins in the early twentieth century, with the pioneering research of botanist Walter P. Cottam. A co-founding board member of The Nature Conservancy, Cottam was an outspoken conservationist, emphasizing the importance of conserving water, soil, and plant resources, and warning against overgrazing, at a time when few leaders in the region were.

A University of Utah professor from 1930-1961, Cottam used campus land for plant research, planting native and exotic trees across campus to evaluate their hardiness in the Salt Lake Valley. He was especially successful at crossing different oak species to create unique hybrids that thrive in Utah’s climate. Cottam’s hybrids are found across campus, including more than 130 in an area near our greenhouses that we call Cottam’s Grove. Our horticulturists care for these rare oak hybrids, collecting and contributing acorns for other gardens and researchers around the world. Our conservation and research staff are carrying out genetic and propagation research on them, laying the foundation for a new round of research on oak ecology and physiology.

Cottam lobbied the Utah State Legislature to designate the campus landscape as a state arboretum in 1961. The mandate was to cultivate public knowledge and appreciation for trees and plants found locally and across the world.

In 1977 Richard Hildreth was hired as full-time Arboretum director to initiate meaningful interpretation of the collections and to develop educational programs emphasizing practical horticulture and plant identification. As the University grew, so did the Arboretum's need for permanent public educational facilities and themed gardens. Philanthropist Ezekiel R. Dumke. Jr., Hildreth, and others successfully led efforts to have the University dedicate 100 acres at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon for a regional botanical garden, which opened to the public in 1985, with daylily and conifer gardens along Red Butte Creek.

The R. Harold Burton Water Pavilion, built the year the Garden opened, was one of its first structures. In 1994, the Walter P. Cottam Visitor Center opened, made possible by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. Over the years, other additions have been the Courtyard Garden, R. Harold Burton Foundation Fragrance Garden, Dr. Ezekiel and Edna Wattis Dumke Medicinal Garden, Ruth Pierpont Eccles Herb Garden, Shirley S. Hemingway Four Seasons Garden, Dumke Floral Walk, Children’s Garden, Richard K. Hemingway Orangerie, Amphitheatre, Sarah J. McCarthey & Family Rose Garden, Water Conservation Garden, and Six Bridges Trail. All were funded by community donations.

Situated where desert, mountains, canyon, and creek meet, Red Butte Garden showcases the geographic diversity and beauty of native and non-native plants and trees in a spectacular setting. The cultivated gardens and natural areas buffer and link the urban environs of city and campus with the incredible wild terrain that surrounds us. It supports not just plant and animal life but our human communities too.

The Garden is located at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon, one of the few remaining undisturbed riparian ecosystems on the Wasatch Front—and source of that chilly breeze on summer concert nights in the Amphitheatre. A protected watershed teeming with diverse plants and wildlife and a designated Research Natural Area managed by the U.S. Forest Service, it is the only area canyon closed to the public, protecting its unique ecosystem and supporting ongoing scientific research.

Red Butte Creek, which flows through the Garden, supports the native Bonneville cutthroat trout, Utah’s official state fish and a state sensitive species. The Garden works with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to protect cutthroat trout in the portion of the creek in our care.

From the top of the Water Conservation Garden, opened in 2017, guests can take in and appreciate much of the creek’s watershed, with panoramic views of the Salt Lake Valley all the way to Great Salt Lake. The Six Bridges Trail, opened in 2021, brings guests up close to the creek to enjoy the flora and fauna in this unique ecosystem.

Beyond its ecological significance, the Red Butte area has deep ties to Utah’s human past. Although written histories begin with the arrival of Mormon pioneers in the 1840s, oral tradition and archaeological evidence indicate paleo-Indians were present in this terrain as far back as 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. When modern settlers arrived in what we now call Utah, they met five culturally rich and diverse Indian Nations who already called this land home. Three of these nations--Shoshone, Goshute & Ute--converged in the Great Salt Lake Valley and the area was a known as a “buffer zone” that no nation laid specific claim to. The canyon of “Red Butte” is known to the Goshute people as Mo’ni-wai-ni – which translates roughly to mean “hanging hands canyon.” The name refers to a pre-colonial occurrence after a battle, the hands of certain captives having been cut off: and hung up at the mouth of this canyon as a warning against trespass.

From Red Butte Canyon came the very building blocks of the city that Mormon pioneers were raising near Great Salt Lake in the mid-nineteenth century. A rail system was built to haul sandstone from the canyon. Native gambel oak trees grew up and around both sides of one of the rail systems, creating one of the Garden’s most iconic views, our picturesque Oak Tunnel. The area eventually became the property of the U.S. Army and the primary watershed for nearby Fort Douglas army post, which used the land for military drills, munitions practice, and landfill. The Army granted this “surplus” land to the U in 1968, which ultimately became Research Park and Red Butte Garden.

Today the Garden cultivates and protects more than 3,000 unique species of plants and trees, including 21 acres of themed gardens and around 75 acres of Natural Area, including more than five miles of hiking trails. Renowned for the variety of its plant collections, the Garden features about 2,000 trees in 456 different taxa in its developed areas, including an American Conifer Society-recognized conifer collection and Cottam's collection of hybrid oaks, which are unique in the world. Other collections of note include ornamental grasses, roses, penstemon, a spring display of about 590,000 bulbs, and an abundance of native and waterwise specimens.

The Garden is supported by more than 15,000 members and almost 400 active volunteers. Our educational programs serve more than 30,000 schoolchildren every year both here in the Garden and at K-12 schools throughout the state. Thousands of youth, family, and adults enjoy hands-on, horticulture-inspired and wellness-based classes and programs.

The Garden continues its mission-based work to conserve rare plants and improve wildland management. That includes banking rare and endangered seed, controlling noxious weeds and reintroducing native specimens in our natural areas, monitoring pollinator activity (the Garden is an essential refugia for bees in the heavily developed valley), trialing new plants for their adaptability to our climate, and the recent groundbreaking discovery of the native Four Corners Potato.

By expertly and responsibly cultivating this critical outdoor space, the Garden puts us in closer touch with the beauty and realities of the West’s urban and wild landscapes. From the Children’s Garden to the Orangerie, our themed gardens and built spaces offer educational and cultural experiences that inspire curiosity, build knowledge, and strengthen community.

Everything we do is focused on developing a community that understands, values, protects, and is enriched by the world of plants. By doing so, we encourage the care and stewardship of our region’s critical outdoor spaces, from individual yards and gardens to trails and public lands. It’s a vision flourishing from deep roots in our founders’ inspirations: scientific curiosity, love for the outdoors, and a belief in the power of plants to make people’s lives healthier and happier.