Developed by Henry Huntington in 1903, San Marinos botanical gardens span some 150 acres of sweeping lawns and vistas interspersed with statuary, tempiettos, and benches. The gardens boasting some 15,000 species of plants and flowers host a variety of seminars and impress thousands of visitors each year. 

The Huntington Covered Garden building is patterned after the traditional conservatories of the 19th and early 20th centuries. An important part of the design "palette" in these buildings was small, repetitive structural steel elements in full view of visitors; the greenhouse environment of high humidity and temperature aggressively corrodes these elements if left unprotected. After consultation with structural and greenhouse engineers, the decision was made to protect all of the structural steel with a hot-dip galvanized coating. The attractive luster of the gray galvanized coating allows the intricate details of the fabrications to be clearly expressed, while requiring no maintenance for many generations, even in the harsh environment of the greenhouse.