How is the Huntington different from other botanical gardens?
Kitty: The Huntington is an estate garden. It’s a place people go for repose and beauty. They don’t go there thinking, “Gosh, I’m going to a science center. So we talked a lot about whether they need some kind of entrance experience that will get them ready for that. Our solution was to have some of the exhibits that are around the entrance are very low-investment introductions, that something’s different in this conservatory. This is a place where things are different. So the first thing you come to in our overlook are kaleidoscopes, and you look through them and it gets you a different view of the room than you would have. This is a very subtle indication that things aren’t going to look the same here. The next thing you come to is videos of plants in motion. That’s seed dispersal; flowering and growth, there are no signs on it, just the videos. So, plants are doing something, this is the message there. The next thing is a visitor’s voice exhibit that gets to make comments about gree
