Desert Garden Conservatory, Botanical garden in San Marino, California.

The Desert Garden Conservatory is a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse built in 1985 beside the 10-acre Huntington Desert Garden in San Marino, California. Its beds hold more than 2,200 accessions across 43 plant families, 1,261 species and subspecies, and 246 genera, drawn from deserts in the southern United States, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, the Canary Islands, Madagascar, Malawi and South Africa.

The facility opened in 1985 as part of the Huntington Library complex and has focused on desert plant conservation ever since. This specialization has made it an important center for preserving knowledge about these hardy plant species.

The Huntington's International Succulent Introductions (ISI) program, run from the Desert Collection, releases up to 40 new succulent varieties each year to collectors, nurseries and institutions. Only seedlings, grafts and rooted cuttings raised in nursery conditions are sold; field-collected plants, cuttings and seeds are never offered, so wild populations are left untouched.

The conservatory is a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse standing next to the 10-acre Huntington Desert Garden in San Marino. John N. Trager curates the desert collection. Plan around the Schick hybrids: their first flush of flowers usually comes in April, with further flushes in May, June and July, and on some hybrids into August, September and October.

Some of the hybrid plants in the collection flower multiple times each year, displaying their blooms across different seasons. These repeated flowering cycles allow visitors to discover different blossoms with return visits.