Breaking News: The Junior Botanist backpacks are temporarily off the floor for an update. To ensure that our apprentice Junior Botanists receive complete and accurate information during their quest, we need to make some changes. Please stay tuned!
We're looking for...Junior Botanists!
You can become an Apprentice Junior Botanist by asking for our backpack of exploration and completing adventures throughout our Conservatory.
Kids age nine and older can bring along an adult adviser with an official ID (such as a driver's license) to check out a backpack from our Visitor Information Services desk, which is filled with cool tools to use during your explorations.
Your adventures begin in the Garden Court and continue throughout the seven of the Conservatory's rooms. It will probably take more than one trip to complete the Junior Botanist program. Each room may take about 20-25 minutes to complete.
Follow up your visit to the Conservatory with at-home activity. Then you'll be ready to apply to become not just an apprentice, but an official U.S. Botanic Garden Junior Botanist. The program is free.
We hope you find botany as exciting and full of surprises as we do. There's a lot more to plants than most people see. Our future depends on plants, or as we botanists like to say, "Plants are not optional!