Tohono Chul's New Plan Puts Its Best Addition in Front of the Ticket Booth

Tohono Chul's marketing staff call the garden the "#1 attracted destination in Oro Valley." Pull into the lot off Paseo del Norte, though, and what you see is saguaros, the Santa Catalinas and no buildings at all. No gardens, no shops, no nursery, no Children's Museum Oro Valley. That gap between reputation and first impression is where "Sonoran Oasis," the garden's new master plan, begins.

The plan goes public on Thursday evening, Oct. 22, at the 49-acre garden. The proposals that matter most to anyone living off Ina Road, west of Pima Canyon, are not new exhibits. They change the walk in from the parking lot and add a front courtyard that the garden says will be free to enter. In practice, the garden would become a place you could stop by for coffee without buying a ticket, and the 30 acres of preserved desert behind it would stay put.

A front door that costs nothing to walk through

As the Explorer reported, the problem the plan tries to solve first is simply arriving. Gayle Mateer is a longtime docent who now serves as the board's vice chair, and she led the master plan. She described visitors who buy a ticket and then "take that path back out to the parking lot." President and CEO Jamie Maslyn Larson called it "a lack of a sense of arrival."

The plan's answer is a small welcome center at the southern entrance. Around it would be a cluster of small, sustainably built buildings for "locally focused, locally owned small businesses." Maslyn Larson mentioned a coffee shop, a bakery, a gelato shop and arts and crafts stores, all set around courtyards connected by a shaded path. "Before you buy a ticket," she told the Explorer. "(Entrance is) for free. It's our gift to the community."

From that courtyard you could walk to The Garden Bistro or north to the Desert Corner garden center and nursery. The plan would move the nursery and make it bigger, easier to see and easier to reach. Assistant marketing manager Anita Chavarin put the idea simply: "you're welcome to linger, without an expectation." Marketing and communications manager Hailey Cheek said it more bluntly: "We don't want to be a hidden gem anymore."

The courtyard also has a financial job. The Explorer reports that those small businesses would help bring in revenue the garden needs. For a nonprofit garden, that matters as much as the visitor experience does.

The 35-foot climb the plan routes around

Once you're past the gate, the second fix is the slope. Today's paths from the parking lot to the center of the garden climb 35 feet at a grade of 4.5 to 5 percent. That's hard going for anyone pushing a stroller and a real obstacle for visitors with limited mobility. "It's all uphill when you come from the parking lot, and in the sun," Mateer said.

Landscape architect Claire Agre of Baltimore-based Unknown Studio proposed a new, higher and flatter path along an east-west ridgeline, called the "Desert Promenade." Maslyn Larson called it "Tohono Chul's yellow brick road," paved in sustainable material, with views across the garden to the Catalinas. Agre said building it on higher ground "solves a ton of problems with one big move," because people find their way by landmarks, and a mountain in view tells them where they are.

The plan also calls for a Foothills Canyon Exploration Garden along the promenade, which Maslyn Larson described as "like a visitors center, but outdoors."

More to do, on the same footprint

According to the Explorer, here's what the plan leaves alone:

• The 30 preserved acres. Of the garden's 49 acres, 30 are preserved desert, and they would stay essentially untouched.
• Total land. The garden isn't expanding, and the plan would actually add an acre of desert.
• Parking. "We didn't even expand our parking," Maslyn Larson said. She added that there are other ways to manage it.
• Undisturbed ground. New facilities would sit "on parking spaces, or already disturbed landscapes," in her words.

Gardens and facilities manager Jack Dash sees the developed ground as a way "to subsidize never having to do anything in those other 30 acres." Cheek summed it up: "We're expanding the experiences of Tohono Chul without expanding Tohono Chul itself."

The plants themselves are changing as well. The Visit Tucson release says the garden is moving away from displaying plants as isolated specimens. Instead it's planting layered, interconnected communities of native and ecologically relevant plants that support wildlife, save resources and hold up better in drought and heat.

The 1963 house that needs the most work

Most of the plan is about new things. The most urgent item is an old one. The Garden Bistro is in the house Richard and Jean Wilson built in 1963 as their family's first home. Maslyn Larson called it "beloved because of its authenticity and charm," but said "it was never designed for its purpose. It needs major work." Much of the wood is rotted, and it needs a new roof and new air conditioning.

Since the building has to be opened up for repairs anyway, Maslyn Larson asked why the garden wouldn't improve the guest experience at the same time. The plan's stated pillars name three historic buildings to preserve and rehabilitate: the Bistro, the Exhibit House and Lomaki House.

Until then, the Garden Bistro is open as usual, daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., serving brunch with reservations and a waitlist.

What happens after the reveal

The plan is a vision, not a construction schedule. "A master plan is not a construction document set," Maslyn Larson told the Explorer. Dash called the current version "an extremely high-level document." Here's the sequence as the garden has laid it out:

1. Planning. More than 800 visitors, members, volunteers, staff and community partners gave input through surveys, workshops, conversations and open houses. Unknown Studio led the work with PMM Architects and Bowman Engineering. Sundt Construction provided construction expertise, and Canopy Strategic Partners handled business and financial modeling.
2. Wednesday, Oct. 21. Leadership was scheduled to update the Oro Valley Town Council. The garden has been inside town limits since 2013, when the council voted on April 17 to annex the surrounding 107 acres, effective May 17.
3. Thursday, Oct. 22, 5 to 7 p.m. The public reveal takes place in the Garden Pavilion. Doors open at 5, and the program starts at 5:45 with Board Chair Koren Manning, Maslyn Larson, Mayor Joe Winfield, Vice Mayor and Mayor-Elect Melanie Barrett, and Mateer. The event page lists it as free and open to the public, though the online RSVP ticket shows as sold out.
4. Next. The garden will refine a first phase, set priorities and work out funding. Projects will be evaluated, funded and built in phases "as resources allow" over 10 to 15 years. No capital campaign amount has been announced.

Pieces of the plan you can visit this fall

None of the courtyard exists yet. Even so, a few events on the fall calendar give a small preview of where the plan is headed. General admission is $20, with $15 for seniors and active military, $10 for youth and free entry for children under two.

• Arboretum on Tap, Saturday, Nov. 7, noon to 3 p.m. Local beer, Family Joint Pizza and DJs in the Adaptive Arboretum. A second date is listed for Dec. 5. The Adaptive Arboretum is a garden of climate-resilient trees. Donors funded it in 2025, meeting a $63,000 goal plus a full match, around the same time Tohono Chul earned accreditation as an arboretum and botanical garden that March.
• Barrio Bread pop-up with Peddler on the Path Coffee, Sunday, Nov. 8, 9 to 11 a.m. It's a small taste of the local-business idea behind the planned courtyard. That evening, from 4 to 7 p.m., Terruño: Flavors of the Desert is a 21-and-over food and wine event.
• Chiles, Chocolate, & Day of the Dead Festival, Saturday, Oct. 31, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $25 general, $20 for members, $10 for youth and free for children under two.
• Exhibitions. The Day of the Dead Altar Project runs Oct. 31 to Nov. 8. "Sonoran Hourglass: Into the Inky Night" and a Kelly Houle exhibition run Nov. 19 to Jan. 31.

"We're building this for Tucsonans," Maslyn Larson told the Explorer. "It's not a Ferris wheel."

At Gray St. Onge, I keep track of changes like this one, the long-range plans that will shape the places around Pima Canyon over the next decade. If you'd like to talk through how nearby plans like Sonoran Oasis fit into a future purchase or sale, schedule a confidential buying or selling consultation.