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About this place
UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is home to a beautiful garden full of native and exotic plants. This is the place where you'll always see hummingbirds and butterflies flying around.
No matter the time you'll decide to visit the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, you'll have thousands of interesting plants and birds to see and watch. The Arboretum is located on the west side of UCSC campus, between the main campus entrance and the west entrance. Parking is 5$ for adults and 2$ for children (6-17 years old) and free under 6.
The arboretum is spread out with well marked paths, so you can wonder around and enjoy nature. Take a paper map from the gift shop as it indicates where the various points of interest are located.
The area is a wide open space, which is divided off into different categories, either by gates or signs. You'll find a California Garden, the Australian Garden, the South African Garden and the New Zealand Garden. Every part of the arboretum has different species of rare and threatened plans of unusual color and shape.
If you want to watch the hummingbirds, you'll find them around the Australian garden and if you're lucky maybe you'll get to see the rare leucistic Anna’s hummingbird.
On the way out, check the gift shop, they sell native plants and have an amazing variety of succulent plants.
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