Oahu’s 5 Botanical Gardens

We've done them all! The great news is 4 out of 5 are FREE!

There are 5 botanical gardens on Oahu: Foster, Koko Crater, Ho’omaluhia, Wahiawa, and Lili’uokalani. Only Foster you need to pay an admission to get in. The rest are all FREE!

Ho’omaluhia is by far the biggest and most scenic. You have the Koolau’s behind as the backdrop. Amazing! There’s a nice lake here with fish and ducks about a less than a half mile walk from the top parking lot and Visitor Center. A long time ago you could go fishing here in the lake for free. They even had bamboo poles you could use, but they stopped that for now. Hopefully one day they will open it up to fishing again. People camp here too in the campsites, but that you’d need to pay with a city camping permit. Just take a day trip here and walk the grounds. World famous for photos on the road between palm tree row. You can check out the visitor center here and they have an art gallery too. Plenty parking and overflow lots. Restroom at the Visitor Center and portapotties down towards the Lake. There’s a nice pavilion you can eat lunch at on the way to the lake, or better yet, bring a blanket to sit on and eat lunch there.

Lili’uokalani is on Kuakini street a little past the hospital going towards Diamond Head on the right. It’s the smallest of all the botanical gardens. Longer than wide to walk. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t have thought it’s a botanical garden. It was once one of Queen Lili’uokalani’s favorite places to picnic, and now it’s dedicated to Native Hawaiian plants. It does have a small picturesque waterfall. You can watch the elders doing Tai Chi in the park a lot of the time. Last time I went though the restrooms were out of order, so maybe use the restroom somewhere before you go. Not too much parking.

Koko Crater is about a 2 mile loop. It can get hot there so bring lots of water. It’s a unique garden because it has a plumeria grove, then it goes into a Hawaiian Native garden, then to a palm tree garden and a cactus desert like garden. There’s only a set of portapotties about a 1/4 mile into the garden from the parking lot. Parking maybe 15-20 stalls in a dirt lot, depending on how people park.

Wahiawa is the coolest temperature wise garden since it’s situated at a higher elevation than the others. Wahiawa is a medium sized garden. It has a trail that you can walk down all the way to the bottom of the ravine. Bring mosquito repellant because you will get eaten down there. Nonetheless, it’s a cool walking path. Lot’s of fauna and trees here. Lots of little birds singing their songs. There’s also a walking bridge that starts in the parking lot off California Ave and goes over the ravine to the other side on to Glen Avenue. Pretty high and pretty cool! The kids love that! Bathrooms are good here and decent amount of parking. A beautiful place to take family/wedding pictures!

Foster is unique in that out of the concrete jungle of Downtown high rises and next to the main freeway, pops out a botanical garden in the city! It’s pretty big as well. Lot’s of history here. There’s a Bodhi tree that was planted in 1913 which makes the tree like 111 years old! They have the famous Corpse Flower as well which blooms like once a year and supposedly it smells awful like rotting meat. There’s lots of different plants and trees here. I’d say if I was a scholar of botany, I’d pick this park of the 5 to come study plants and trees. They have the more interesting ones here in my opinion. The bathrooms are more towards the front of the garden. There’s lot’s of parking here.

So which one have you decided to vist? Ah…just do them all so you can give yourself a “I did all the botanical gardens badge.” Take the kids on a picnic to them all. They will have fun!