Mendocino County is home to over 3,000 types of mushrooms, and the Gardens has over 150 species identified to date (although many more of the LBM's, little brown mushrooms, are still waiting for id!).

Every fall, beginning in October, when the gentle rains begin to fall, the mushrooms flourish in abundance. It's the perfect place to sample chanterelles, porcinis, morels and hedgehogs, and even the extremely rare candy cap mushroom, with its intense maple-syrup flavor, that grows only along the northern coast of California.

The highlight of mushroom season is Mendocino County's annual 10-day Wine & Mushroom Festival (this year from Friday, November 5th through Monday, November 15th), with everything from mushroom dinners, wine- and beer-pairing workshops, mushroom exhibits, guided mushroom foraging walks and much, much more. For a complete listing of this year's events, click on the PDF icon at the bottom of this page or visit the Fest website.

Here at the Gardens, be sure join us for one of our Mushroom Identification Walks, every Monday at 1:30pm from November 1st to the end of January (or the end of the mushrooms, whichever comes first), free with admission. We also have fabulous workshops on mushroom identification, oyster mushroom cultivation, and medicinal mushrooms. See our Calendar page for full descriptions of our mushroom classes.

Want to take an armchair tour of our mushrooms? Visit our Photo Gallery page to see photos of many of the mushrooms found at the Gardens.