Selby Gardens Announces 2025-2026 Programming
Image: Courtesy Photo
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is blooming with new programming for the 2025-2026 season—including special exhibitions, programs, events and continued work on its downtown Sarasota campus as its Master Plan progresses.
Here's a peek at what's coming up.
Image: Matt Chung
Downtown Sarasota Campus
The Orchid Show 2025: Rebecca Louise Law
Oct. 11-Dec. 7, 2025
Selby Gardens will collaborate with British contemporary artist Rebecca Louise Law on its 2025 Orchid Show. The exhibition will explore the theme of survival, featuring an immersive installation of dried flowers by Law in the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & the Arts. Accompanying Law’s installation will be living orchids and other plants in the Display Conservatory, designed by Selby Gardens’ horticulture team.
Historic Spanish Point Campus
Robert Louis Stevenson: A Child’s Garden of Verses
Nov. 15, 2025-Aug. 30, 2026
This exhibit celebrates childhood and the imagination of youth through the words and images of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child’s Garden of Verses. The exhibition will feature photographs of pages from a vintage edition of the book, combining Stevenson’s poetry with illustrations by American artist Alexander Dobkin. Accompanying the photographs will be simple interactive activities that draw inspiration from Stevenson’s poems. An audio element will enable visitors to hear the poems read by Selby Gardens’ artist-in-residence Patti Smith.
Image: Lynn Goldsmith
Downtown Sarasota campus
Lynn Goldsmith and Patti Smith: Flowers and Friendship
June 20-Sept. 13, 2026
The summer 2026 exhibition at Selby Gardens will celebrate the creative collaboration and friendship between photographer Lynn Goldsmith and singer-songwriter Patti Smith, who is Selby Gardens’ artist-in-residence. The exhibition will feature Goldsmith’s photographs of Smith in the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany & the Arts, offering an intimate portrait of the iconic Smith over the course of her career. Supplementing the photographs in the museum will be a selection of Goldsmith’s fine art photographs of flowers.
Image: Courtesy Photo
Other Programming
In addition to these exhibitions, Selby Gardens is also bringing back popular series like Lunch in the Gardens at the downtown campus, Cocktails at the Cottage at Historic Spanish Point, and seasonal light shows like Halloween's "Lights at Spooky Point" and "Lights in Bloom" over the holiday season. Its spring 2026 exhibition will be announced at a later date.
For more information, go to selby.org
