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Bellevue Botanical Garden

May 27 2026
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Continuing to Evolve How We Welcome and Engage Our Visitors

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Organizational Updates No Comments
The Bellevue Botanical Garden Society (BBGS), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is the primary partner of the Garden and supports educational programming, horticultural learning, and visitor services. Through programs, events, volunteers, and community partnerships, BBGS helps connect visitors with the unique plants, ecosystems, and gardening practices of the Pacific Northwest. Nearly 500,000 people visit the Bellevue Botanical Garden each year. They include people who live, work, and play in Bellevue, as well as families, school groups, and visitors from across the…
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Nov 10 2025
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Dahlias Demystified: From Origins to Overwintering

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Botany, Gardening No Comments
By Angelina (Alexia) Demiroska, BBG volunteer writer If you have been in a dahlia garden before, you might’ve found yourself wondering if you were a victim of false advertising. Are these flowers that look so different from each other really all dahlias? The answer is yes. The Dahlia is native to many regions of Mexico. The Nahuatl name given to it was Acocoxochitl (roughly translating to water cane). Some suggest that dahlias were useful in Aztec agriculture, but supporting evidence…
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Jun 14 2023
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The Mighty Gunnera

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Botany, Gardening, History, Nature One Comment
The Mighty Gunnera By Cecilia Ayres   The Bellevue Botanical Garden is home to several Gunnera tinctoria plants. With their giant, serrated green leaves, thick, spiky stalks, and vibrant red flower spikes, they are easy to spot. The leaves can grow to be four feet across and stand at eight feet tall in the right conditions. These unique features are not only stunning, but characteristics that date back to the Cretaceous Period—yes, gunneras were around in the time of dinosaurs!…
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Oct 22 2022
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The Oldest Tree in My Neighborhood

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, History, Nature One Comment
By guest writer McKenzie Toomey I sat down in the shade of the towering White Oak, and I watched the branches sway above me. The leaves rustled against each other in the wind, almost whispering to me. I rested my hands on the outcropping roots that grew nearly six feet out from the tree’s base, and I felt the energy that flowed through the tree, the energy that had created this mammoth of nature, the energy that sustained this ancient…
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Jul 16 2021
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Plant Awareness Disparity & Our Snap-It Challenge!

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Botany, Nature, Youth Education No Comments
By Kate Sorensen What is “Plant Awareness Disparity”? Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD) is a term proposed by Kathryn Parsley to replace an older term: “plant blindness.” To summarize her proposal, there is a disparity between how Euro-centric people notice plants in their environment versus how they notice animals. This disparity is based on attention, attitude, knowledge, and relative interest towards plants. She wrote: “The disparity between how often people notice plants compared to how often people notice animals is what…
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Nov 19 2020
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Leaf Magic

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Crafts, Nature, Youth Education No Comments
Leaf Magic  by Barb Williams At every season of the year there is Leaf Magic to be found at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. You will find leaves of different colors, shapes and sounds. The Nature of Sitting by Pam Beyette Treat yourself by sitting in the leaf chair opposite the Ground Cover Garden waterfall (this chair is actually an art piece titled "The Nature of Sitting" by artist Pam Beyette). As you sit, notice the colorful leaves as they whirl,…
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Nov 05 2020
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One Corner: Past and Present

By Bellevue Botanical Garden, Gardening, History, Nature No Comments
One Corner: Past and Present By Cynthia Welte The Shorts House under construction; the patio and tree would be installed in the foreground. The log cabin to the left is where the Shorts lived when they moved to this property. Cal and Harriet Shorts’ home was built in 1957. As avid gardeners, they planted many trees and shrubs all around their home, including a Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) on the southwest corner of the patio. Sadly, this tree struggled…
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Sep 23 2020
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Haunted By That Day

By Bellevue Botanical Garden No Comments
The following post was part of a larger article in the Arnoldia Journal from the Arnold Arboretum about the impact of COVID-19 on botanical gardens. To see the complete article, go HERE. Haunted By That Day By Nancy Kartes, Garden Manager On January 21, 2020, our nation’s first case of COVID-19 was reported in the Seattle area, just a few miles from Bellevue Botanical Garden. I was not paying attention to the news. As garden manager, I was deep into…
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The Bellevue Botanical Garden is a successful partnership between City of Bellevue Parks and Community Services and the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

© 2026 Bellevue Botanical Garden Society. All Rights Reserved. | Website photography courtesy of Joseph Abken, Michele Burton, Bob Cerelli, James Gagliardi, Brian Hart, Darcy McInnis, Rebecca Randall, Lisa Wissner-Slivka, Jil Stenn, Anita White, and Zhong Zheng.

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