National Tropical Botanical Garden, Koloa

Wow, this was a terrific experience primarily because of our guide David Alexander. He kept the tour entertaining, offered a ton of cultural and plant trivia, and was overall an amazing spirit. He's also a scientist, so has immense knowledge of botany and appreciates both the taxonomy and landscaping. Thanks to David, I'm seriously considering volunteering next time I'm in Hawaii. Thank you a million times David! The tour lasts about 2.5 hours, covers the history of McBryde and Allerton families, founding of the science center, and about 75% of observation about plants. The highlight is probably visiting the Banyan trees where they filmed the Jurassic Park scenes, as well as the "history" of plants from moss and ferns all the way to orchids and fruit trees.

We (me, my mom, and my two little girls) did "The Best of Both Worlds" tour and thoroughly enjoyed it. After trying to just "show up" one day and realizing that they were booked (and not having close-toed shoes), we booked online for a tour the next day. With a little help from Google, we were able to find a discount code that saved us about $20. Our tour guide was Paul and he was great. Lots of corny jokes and knowledgeable about the area. The McBryde Garden was a bit more like a botanical garden with winding paths and different plants in different areas, but it is still rugged and jungle-y. The Allerton Garden is set up with different "rooms" with different plants and art. We loved seeing the areas where Jurassic Park was filmed and had fun playing in the giant tree roots with the "eggs". There is so much to see, that really, a 4 or 5 hour tour would probably be more appropriate, but most people likely don't have the attention span for that.