The Huntington

Like fiery tails, these spiky Desert Garden flowers add sparks of color to this busy section of The Huntington’s display of cacti and palms.

We only drove past The Huntington’s Desert Garden, but even a quick view revealed an amazing variety of shapes and colors – many of them with sharp edges. This image has a wealth of greens, not what you expect in a desert garden.

Pink and purple blooms fill up a flower bed in The Huntington’s gardens.

Sunshine highlights the warm colors of a ‘Confetti’ rose in The Huntington’s gardens.

’Julie Andrews’ blooms reach out for the afternoon light in the Huntington’s Rose Garden.

Olive, juniper, and other trees are trained and trimmed to look just like their full-size relatives in this row of bonsai in the Japanese Gardens.

Miniature trees decorate a corner of the Japanese Garden.

A short stream winds through The Huntington’s Japanese Garden.

This large California gray squirrel finds plenty of acorns under the Live Oaks.

A decorative stone lantern marks an entrance to the Shoya House in The Huntington’s Japanese Garden.

Inside the Shoya House, sliding screens open different sized rooms for a modular space. Notice the carved wooden screen at the top adding a natural element.

A Japanese Shoya House was donated to the Huntington and rebuilt in the Japanese Garden. The multi-level tile roof, while not original, reproduces the distinctive look of a prosperous farmer’s house.

Afternoon sun sets the Bird of Paradise blooms ablaze outside the Huntington Art Gallery.

Kehinde Wiley painted ‘A Portrait of a Young Gentleman’ in 2021 based on Thomas Gainsborough’s painting of the same name (now known as The Blue Boy). While Blue Boy radiates wealth and status, Wiley uses the same style to raise up those who typically lack privilege. And placing the two young men so they are…

Thomas Gainsborough’s famous ‘The Blue Boy’ from 1770 recalled the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck’s earlier glamorous portraits of British aristocrats. Blue Boy had the prime position in the Huntington Gallery.

This bust of the 4th Earl of Chesterfield in the Art Gallery includes him wearing a medal depicting St. George, England’s patron saint, and representing the knighthood he received in 1730.

The Huntington European Art Gallery showcases the art of 1700s England in the Huntington family’s former mansion.

This oversized book of John James Audubon’s ‘The Birds of America, vol. 2’ needed to be big enough to show nearly 500 species of birds in life-sized illustrations, including the Great Blue Heron.

Created in Italy in the late 1500s by Francesco Ghisolfi, this hand-drawn atlas offered kings and merchants up-to-date charts of coastlines and features of distant lands. A work of art, it also shows what Europeans knew (and didn’t know) about the rest of the world!

This facsimile of an original parchment of Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (owned by the library) features gold illuminations, just like the original.

The reading room of the Huntington Library features original maps, drawings, photos and manuscripts from English and North American history. An even larger storage facility next door keeps track of the collection of 11 million items for researchers and rotating exhibits.

Banana leaves show the contrasts of light and shade in a corner of the Chinese Gardens.

A pair of rounded doors frames a view of the pond, inviting a glimpse into a world of color and tranquility.

A flower on one of the blooming fruit trees in the Chinese Garden catches the sunlight from behind.

Here’s the view from behind the waterfall looking out toward the pond. The waterfall is visible in the upper right of the Chinese Gardens1 image.