The 155-acre South Park was designed in 1894 as an arboretum, with more than 2,300 types of trees, shrubs and plant life, and room for a large conservatory building, now home to the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens. Olmsted originally designed this park as an arboretum and there are still more than 200 species of trees in the park. We are working with the Botanical Gardens to create a Victorian arboretum so historic and extensive that it becomes the southern anchor of horticultural activity with the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Niagara Parks Commission School of Horticulture to the north.