Quito Botanical Gardens, Botanical garden in Parque La Carolina, Quito, Ecuador.

Quito Botanical Gardens covers 18,600 square meters inside Parque La Carolina, at Rumipamba Street and Río Amazonas Avenue, next to the Museum of Natural Sciences. Its collections line walking paths: wetland plants, cloud forest, páramo plants, medicinal plants and fruit trees. Two greenhouses hold high-altitude and tropical orchids placed on stones, soil and tree trunks as in nature.

The garden was created in 1989 when the Ecuadorian Museum of Natural Sciences, the Gardening Club and the Municipality of Quito turned the old municipal nursery in Parque La Carolina into a botanical garden. In June 1991 the Fundación Botánica de los Andes was set up to administer it and to work for the knowledge, protection and conservation of Ecuadorian flora.

The orchid garden occupies two greenhouses, one for high-altitude orchids and one for tropical species, with plants set on stones, on the ground and on tree trunks as they grow in the wild. Elsewhere in the garden, the guanto or floripondio (Brugmansia) is labelled as the flower of the Inca, once believed to ward off evil spirits, and the cascarilla or quina (Cinchona officinalis) is grown as the source of the malaria remedy.

The garden lies inside Parque La Carolina at Rumipamba E6-264 and Av. Shirys, beside the Museum of Natural Sciences. It opens Monday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays and holidays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Quito's rainy season runs long, with a four-month dry spell; temperatures range from 10 to 27 °C.

The páramo section holds cushion plants that store water like soft green mattresses; the garden warns visitors not to lie on them. The orchid houses keep high-altitude and tropical orchids mounted on stones, soil and tree trunks as they grow in the wild. The herbarium code QUITO registers the garden with Botanic Gardens Conservation International.