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Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

The Santo Domingo Botanical Garden is a beautiful island of green situated in a sea of concrete.

Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

When most people think of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, they come up with visions of blue ocean and white sandy beaches. Because the reason for our visit was largely work related, we had the opportunity to spend a longer time sharing the city with it’s nearly 4 million inhabitants. When walking the streets we found very few tourists. We did find a that many of the locals were welcoming and laid back. But this overall attitude does not carry over when there are wheels and a motor involved. We shared the sidewalk with motorcycles not wanting to fight the street traffic. And found that instead of yielding at stop signs the norm is to beep to warn oncoming traffic that you are heading on through.

Cactus at Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

A welcome vision of green in the city center of Santo Domingo

With all of this chaos, the soothing expanse of land that has been transformed into a botanical garden was a welcome find.

The Santo Domingo Botanical Garden’s best known and most popular feature is the Japanese Garden. Wandering to the far end of the park to enjoy the scene there is well worth the walk.

Walkway in the Japanese Garden

Walkway in the Japanese Garden

pond at Japanese Garden

Colorful red bridge over pond in the calming Japanese Garden

Tree in Japanese Garden

Tree with impressive above ground roots in the Japanese Garden

There is also a cactus garden.

Cactus Gargen

Colorful cactus in the Santo Domingo Botanical Garden

Several species of bamboo.

Bamboo grove

Cactus Gargen

Gorgeous flowering trees.

Yellow flowering tree

Yellow flowering tree

And areas that are crawling with beautiful vines vying for sunlight.

vines climbing tree

Vines climbing tree toward the sun

There are also several ponds on the property complete with resident turtles.

turtle at santo domingo botanical park

Turtle taking a sun and mud bath by the pond

It was a fantastic day and a welcome quiet relaxing day. Almost making up for the need to walk back, through all of that traffic. Ah well.

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Evelyn

Tuesday 4th of June 2019

Hi, I'm from Santo Domingo DR and I came to the United States 35 years ago. I'm so happy to see other people enjoying and sharing with others the beauty of DR. Thank You:)

christine

Sunday 8th of March 2015

Beautiful garden! I am going to Santo Domingo in June so I will have to check it out.

melody pittman

Wednesday 4th of February 2015

What a lovely article and photos. I have been to quite a few places like this over the past couple of weeks and it just feels so good to be able to admire such beauty in nature. ;)