Time to visit: 2 to 3 hours

Facilities and restaurant open on site for dinner

The Desert botanical gardens in Phoenix, were a pleasant surprise. There are 50,000 plants amid the Giant Papago Buttes. The gardens are well preserved and sprawling with clearly marked trails. It can take a while but the trails are very scenic and have benches to take in the setting. A part of the fee goes toward the conservation of the gardens. The gardens host wonderful exhibitions and have brilliant flowers and interesting wildlife.

We had an opportunity to see some of the bird species that call the desert their home. The garden are an excellent habitat and has a variety of birds at every corner. We also saw owls nests in some of the Sagurao.

Some of the longer trails brought us to tall Saguaros. Walking amongst giant Saguaro cactus I felt quite small. Found exclusively in the Sonoran Desert the Saguaro cactus are like trees and have arms, some grow up to 40 feet in height.  

We returned for a spectacular sunset and an out of this world light show. The scenes were projected on a rock and the lights and sounds created amazing production on the various cacti.