The Central Coast's Premier Horticultural Display Garden
Visitors are always welcome. With plants changing with the seasons, visitors are encouraged to return often to enjoy the many varied highlights and vistas. Located on the Cal Poly Campus, the arboretum occupies five acres overlooking the campus with dramatic views of the nearby coastal mountains.
Learn by doing
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is renowned for its unique "Learn by Doing" approach to academic instruction. In this tradition, everything in the garden has been designed, built and maintained by students. The arboretum represents a collection of class projects, laboratory exercises and senior projects that have evolved over the past 50 years into the Mediterranean climate garden visitors experience today. Our students see the results of their efforts and decisions and learn valuable lessons that make them work-ready and knowledgeable citizens.
The Gardens
Primarily focused on the world's five Mediterranean climate regions: Australia, California, Chile, the Mediterranean basin and South Africa, the arboretum also features numerous others gardens, each unique while continuing the cohesive experience throughout.
Entry Garden
Welcoming visitors, the Entry Garden showcases some of the most interesting plants found in the arboretum, and demonstrates ways to combine and blend plants from all of the world's Mediterranean climates.
Australian Garden
Featuring colorful flowering plants including several bottlebrush, grevillea, and correa, the Australian Garden is a haven for hummingbirds. Highlights include numerous species of exotic banksias, emu bushes, and a grove of one of Australia's more unusual trees, Brachychiton rupestris. Ranging in texture, color, and shape from kangaroo paws to grass trees and a coral tree, many of the plants found in this garden offer attractive and unusual flowers, seed pods and foliage throughout the year.
Californian Garden
This garden is designed to resemble many of the natural plant communities found throughout California. Here you may walk through a lush redwood grove, view a grass meadow, or overlook a restoration bank that demonstrates the strength and adaptability of our state's native flora. The Ceanothus collection produces a must-see show of blue flowers in the spring. While some of the other collections include Agave, Arctostaphylos, Quercus, and Salvia.
Chilean Garden
Growing along the top of the arboretum, the Chilean Garden displays many plants from the Chilean matorral ecoregion - an area of central Chile with a climate very similar to California. Representative plants include trees, flowering shrubs, pineapple relatives from the bromeliad family, and geophytes. Cantua buxifolia 'Hot Pants' produces hot pink, pendulous trumpet shaped flowers in spring and summer, while Luma apiculata displays creamy white, star shaped flowers from mid-summer to fall.
Mediterranean Garden
Encompassing plants from the Mediterranean basin, this garden highlights many old favorites including several cultivars of rosemary and lavender, an olive grove, as well as many lesser-known mediterranean plants. Additionally, the garden features a variety of picturesque trees including blue Atlas cedar, Lombardy poplar, Italian cypress, cork oak, Canary Island palm, almond, Italian stone pine and madrone. Enjoy sweeping vistas of the Morros and the Cal Poly campus from a seating area near a small, bubbling pond.
South African Garden
At the far end of the arboretum, the mesembryanthemum bank in the South African Garden puts on a stunning display of vibrant spring color. Large pots of unusual succulents, plants from the restio family, seasonal geophytes, along with proteas and their relatives offer continual color, exotic flowers and interest throughout the year. Stop to smell the large "grape kool aid" shrub (Psoralea pinnata) and marvel at the size of the sugar bush flowers (Protea repens).
Formal Garden
Offering an interesting contrast from other gardens in the arboretum, the Formal Garden is ordered and carefully planned to create a symmetrical geometric pattern of neat, shaped and continually trimmed hedges. Centered around a tiered fountain, a boxwood parterre is interplanted with numerous evergreen topiaries. For the best view of the garden's design, walk around to the overlook deck.
Primitive Garden
Step back in time as you walk through a group of prehistoric plants in the Primitive Garden. These ancient plants include ginkgo, horsetail, gunnera and a sizeable collection of cycads. A focal point in the garden is the dawn redwood, (Metasequoia glyptostroboide) which is a deciduous conifer with golden russet foliage in fall and is the only living species of the ancient redwood genus Metasequoia. Standing on the wooden bridge, watch our seasonal creek flow after a winter rain.
Palm & Aloe Garden
The Palm and Aloe Garden hosts a collection of palms from around the world, along with more than 60 species of aloes and other succulents. The aloes, with their amazing variety of foliage colors and patterns, range in height from just a few inches tall to tree types reaching thirty feet or more with massive trunks at maturity. Aloe ciliaris, climbing aloe, grows as a vine supporting itself on the trunks and stems of other plants.
Visiting the Arboretum
Located at the Environmental Horticultural Science unit at the end of Via Carta, the arboretum is open year-round - 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday - except academic holidays. There is no admission fee.
History of the Arboretum
From its very beginnings, the Leaning Pine Arboretum has been characterized by the creativity, resourcefulness and collaboration of its stewards.
Storymap Tour
This interactive map tells the story of each plant. Use this walking tour while visiting to identify key plants and places in the Leaning Pine Arboretum.
Walking and Parking Map
This detailed map provides comprehensive information on plants, walking distances and elevation changes in the Leaning Pine Arboretum as well as parking information.
Tree Inventory
A complete inventory of each tree in the Leaning Pine Arboretum. Use the username "Public" and password "oak123" to locate all named trees on the LPA site in TreePlotter.
Reserving the Arboretum
The Leaning Pine Arboretum is a perfect location for events or a private tour. Guided Tours are given to public groups by reservation. Please complete the Tour Request form and submit at least two weeks in advance.