Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden offers year-round beauty on a historic property with more than 50 acres of spectacular gardens, dining and shopping.

Spring is here, and just in time!  If you haven’t heard, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is in the running for USA Today’s contest for the country’s Best Botanical Garden. You may remember that in 2014, with your help, we were voted the 2nd Best Public Garden in North America in a similar USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards contest.  We are  one of only 20 gardens from around the United States who were nominated, so it’s a great honor.   Whether you vote for us, or another botanical garden, this contest helps to raise the profile of public gardens and in that sense we are all winners.

And while our peak bloom time, A Million Blooms, starts this weekend — blooms aren’t all that we are about. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s mission is education and our passion is connecting people and plants to improve communities.  We educate more than 12,000 school children annually, including a quarter from low-to-moderate income households who participate at no charge. Each year in the Community Kitchen Garden we grow more than 10,000 pounds of fresh produce to provide nourishing meals for school children and home-bound senior citizens through our partnership with FeedMore. Outreach is important to us, we support community public greening initiatives like Beautiful RVA that enhance quality of life for Richmonders and positively impact our local  economy.

We’d be honored if you’d vote for us. You can vote daily through March 28, 2016  at noon. Winners will be announced April 1. Stay tuned, we’ll be sure to let you know how we do!