Golden Gate Park: glasshouses, gardens and great museums

Golden Gate Park runs for miles from the Haight to Ocean Beach, and in one long day you can walk from a Victorian glasshouse through cloud forests and redwoods to a museum tower with a view over it all. Here is how to see its gardens and museums, and when to come back after dark.

Golden Gate Park stretches for miles from the Haight to Ocean Beach, a long green rectangle of lakes, meadows and woods. Most visitors see one corner of it. Give it a whole day, though, and you can travel from a Victorian glasshouse to the cloud forests of the Andes, and from ancient art to a tower with a view over the treetops.

The glasshouse

Start at the eastern end, at the Conservatory of Flowers, the oldest public wood-and-glass conservatory in North America. Its glass halls hold five galleries.

In Aquatic Plants, pools imitate a tropical river, and the giant water lily spreads its spiny leaves in all but the coldest months; Highland Tropics recreates the misty cloud forests of tropical mountains, with delicate high-altitude orchids, a display few institutions in the United States attempt.

In the Lowland Tropics a light rain falls on palms, coffee berries and cacao pods, and some of the residents are centenarians: an Imperial Philodendron, ancient cycads and a pygmy date palm that came from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The Potted Plants gallery nods to the Victorian collectors, and the quiet West Gallery is all ferns. The Conservatory opens Thursday to Tuesday, 10am–4.30pm.

The gardens

Walk west to the San Francisco Botanical Garden: 55 acres and more than 8,000 kinds of plants from around the world, open since 1940. San Francisco’s cool, foggy climate turned out to suit the plants of tropical mountains, so the cloud-forest gardens are its pride.

Andean wax palms, the tallest palm species in the world, grow in the Andean Cloud Forest, and the Mesoamerican Cloud Forest, first planted in 1984, now has a canopy of tropical oaks and pines.

Closer to home, a grove of coast redwoods and the Arthur L. Menzies Garden of California Native Plants show off the state’s own flora, the most diverse in the United States. A garden for California natives was part of the original bequest from Helene Strybing that founded the Garden. Look out for the magnolias and rhododendrons, and the Great Meadow on a clear afternoon.

Two museums and a tea garden

At the heart of the park, around the Music Concourse, three of the city’s best visits stand side by side. The de Young, one of the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, runs from ancient art to American painting and big exhibitions; go up its Hamon Tower (it closes at 4.30pm) for a view over the park towards the ocean.

Across the concourse, the California Academy of Sciences puts an aquarium, a planetarium and a rainforest under one living roof.

San Francisco’s fog, the gardeners found, suits the plants of the tropical mountains.

Between them, the Japanese Tea Garden has a pagoda, arched bridges and ponds, and is the calmest half-hour in the park. All three are in this guide; the de Young and the Academy both reward booking ahead, and the de Young opens Tuesday to Sunday, 9.30am–5.15pm.

After dark

The park has its own winter lights. Every night, about 30 minutes after sunset, the Photosynthesis light show plays across the Conservatory’s glass, with music; it lasts about half an hour and is watched from the front lawns, at no charge. From late November to early January, the Botanical Garden holds Lightscape, a ticketed trail of light installations through the gardens; book it on the gardens’ website.

How to plan the day

Begin at the Conservatory when it opens, walk the gardens before lunch, eat at the de Young’s café or on its terrace, and give the afternoon to the museums. If you have energy left, follow the park west to Ocean Beach for the sunset; it is a walk for the shore rather than the surf, as the water is cold and the currents strong. Bring a warm layer for the fog.

Our advice: buy timed tickets for the de Young and the Academy in advance, keep the Conservatory for the morning, when the glasshouse is quietest, and come back on a winter evening for the light show.