Garden sights in North America
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Classical Chinese Garden
The Classical Chinese Garden is a one-block haven of tranquillity, reflecting ponds and manicured greenery. Free tours are available with admission.
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Berkeley Rose Garden
On Euclid Ave just south of Eunice St is the Berkeley Rose Garden and its eight terraces of Technicolor explosions. Here you'll find quiet benches and a plethora of almost perpetually blooming roses. Across the street is a picturesque park with a children's playground (including a fun concrete slide about 100ft long).
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Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
The 7-acre Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, studded with contemporary works, like the oft-photographed Spoonbridge & Cherry by Claes Oldenburg. The garden is connected to attractive Loring Park by a sculptural pedestrian bridge over I-94.
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National Tropical Botanical Garden
If plants aren't your thing, National Tropical Botanical Garden might inspire you to develop that green thumb. NTBG, a nonprofit working to propagate tropical and endangered species, manages five gardens (three on Kaua'i, one on Maui and one in Florida).
In Po'ipu's NTBG, don't miss the 80-acre Allerton Garden, a stunning landscape masterpiece, showcasing giant Moreton Bay fig trees (seen in Jurassic Park), an 'undulating' fountain, golden bamboo groves, pristine lagoon and valley walls blanketed with purple bougainvillea during summer. In 1870 Queen Emma, the wife of Kamehameha IV, lived in Lawa'i Valley - and her summer cottage still stands today. The garden's namesake …
reviewed
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Tidal Basin
Beloved for the magnificent Yoshino cherry trees that ring it, the Tidal Basin is an elegant aquatic interruption to the stone and grass of the Mall and its surrounding web of roads. The orchard was a gift from Japan in 1912; since then, every year in late March or early April the banks shimmer with pale pink blossoms. When said blossoms start to shed, the effect of soft pink snow against warm spring weather is intoxicating. The National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates this event – late March and early April draw 750,000 visitors to DC for the festivities, which culminate in a big parade. The amoeba-shaped Tidal Basin serves a practical purpose: flushing the adjacent W…
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Na 'Aina Kai Botanical Gardens
Joyce and Ed Doty moved to Kaua'i from California in 1982 and began landscaping the grounds of their home. Today the Dotys are in their 80s and their retirement project is a 240-acre extravaganza of Na 'Aina Kai Botanical Gardens, all meticulously groomed.
The expansive grounds include 13 gardens, including the 'Formal Garden' where over 70 life-sized bronze statues romp in Norman Rockwell-inspired poses. A unique attraction is the Poinciana maze, where paths lead you to topiary and statues. Also on the grounds: a beach, a bird-watching marsh and a sprawling forest of around 60,000 South and East Asian hardwood trees.
The gardens are a tad contrived, as they lack the histo…
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Le Petit Versailles
Le Petit Versailles is a unique marriage of a verdant oasis and an electrifying arts organization, offering a range of quirky performances and screenings to the public. The 6 & B Garden is a well-organized space that hosts free music events, workshops and yoga sessions; check the website for details. Three dramatic weeping willows, an odd sight in the city, grace the twin plots of 9th Street Garden and La Plaza Cultural. Also check out the All People’s Garden and Brisas del Caribe, easily located thanks to its surrounding white-picket fence.
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United States National Arboretum
The best things in life – or this city – require a little effort. In this case, you need wheels to reach the greatest green space in Washington, almost 450 acres of meadowland, sylvan theatres and a pastoral setting that feels somewhere between bucolic Americana countryside and a Romantic artist’s conception of classical Greek ruralscapes. Stop at the Administration Building near the R St gate for a map and information. Highlights include the Bonsai & Penjing Museum (10am-4pm), east of the Administration Building, and the Capitol Columns Garden, south along Ellipse Rd. The latter is studded with Corinthian pillars removed from the Capitol in the 1950s. The best time…
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9th St Garden & La Plaza Cultural
Le Petit Versailles is a unique marriage of a verdant oasis and an electrifying arts organization, offering a range of quirky performances and screenings to the public. The 6 & B Garden is a well-organized space that hosts free music events, workshops and yoga sessions; check the website for details. Three dramatic weeping willows, an odd sight in the city, grace the twin plots of 9th Street Garden and La Plaza Cultural. Also check out the All People’s Garden and Brisas del Caribe, easily located thanks to its surrounding white-picket fence.
reviewed
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Garfield Park Conservatory
These 4.5 acres under glass are the Park District’s pride and joy. Built in 1907, the conservatory completed a multi-million-dollar restoration campaign in 2000, polishing it above and beyond its original splendor. One of the initial designers, Jens Jensen, intended for the palms, ferns and other plants to recreate Chicago’s prehistoric landscape. Today the effect continues – all that’s missing is a rampaging stegosaurus. Newer halls contain displays of seasonal plants that are especially spectacular in the weeks before Easter. Kids can get dirty with roots and seeds in the Children’s Garden. Between May and October the outdoor grounds are open, including the Demonstratio…
reviewed
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Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden
A lush and lovely vantage point for admiring the land and sea of the Windward Coast, Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden occupies a 400-acre corner at the foot of the Ko'oalu Range. It is planted with trees and shrubs from the world's tropical regions and was originally designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers as flood protection for the valley.
This peaceful natural preserve is networked by trails winding through the green park up to a 32-acre lake (no swimming). A small visitor center features displays on the park's history, flora and fauna, and Hawaiian ethnobotany. Guided two-hour nature hikes are offered at 10:00 Saturday and 13:00 Sunday.
The park is at the end of Luluku …
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Brisas del Caribe
Le Petit Versailles is a unique marriage of a verdant oasis and an electrifying arts organization, offering a range of quirky performances and screenings to the public. The 6 & B Garden is a well-organized space that hosts free music events, workshops and yoga sessions; check the website for details. Three dramatic weeping willows, an odd sight in the city, grace the twin plots of 9th Street Garden and La Plaza Cultural. Also check out the All People’s Garden and Brisas del Caribe, easily located thanks to its surrounding white-picket fence.
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Yerba Buena Gardens
A spot of green in the swath of concrete South of Market. With Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and SFMOMA on one side and the Metreon on the other, this is a prime spot for sun and downtime in between art and a movie. Free noontime concerts in summer feature world music, hip-hop and jazz. The show-stopping centerpiece is Houston Cornwell and Joseph De Pace’s sleek Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Fountain, a wall of water that runs over the Reverend’s immortal words: ‘…until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ A pedestrian bridge over Howard St links the popular esplanade to its tagalong kid sister, an often overlooked playground and ente…
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Lincoln Park Conservatory
‘It’s like a free trip around the world,’ one visitor said after walking through the conservatory’s 3 acres of desert palms, jungle ferns and tropical orchids. We couldn’t agree more, especially in winter, when the glass-bedecked hothouse remains a soothing 75°F escape from the icy winds raging outside. Just south, the 1887 statue Storks at Play has enchanted generations of Chicagoans. Real birds fill the landscape immediately northeast, at the corner of Fullerton Pkwy and Cannon Dr, around the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. The Prairie-style garden, whose stonework resembles the stratified canyons of the Wisconsin Dells, is an important stopover for migrating spec…
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Moir Gardens
If cacti are your fancy, Moir Gardens offers a modest oasis on the grounds of the Kiahuna Plantation condo. It's a low-key, approachable collection of mature cacti and succulents, interspersed with winding paths, a lily pond and colorful shocks of orchids.
The gardens, established in the 1930s and now part of the Kiahuna Plantation resort, were originally the estate of Hector Moir, manager of Koloa Sugar Plantation, and Alexandra 'Sandie' Knudsen Moir. The Moirs were once avid gardeners who switched from tropical flowering plants to drought-tolerant ones before it became trendy.
A sideshow rather than a showstopper, it's a sweet garden worth a stroll if you're staying near…
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Limahuli Garden
Learn to distinguish Kaua'i's flora among native, Polynesian-introduced and modern-introduced (alien) species at Limahuli Garden, part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden . Perhaps the most natural of all Kaua'i's gardens, the setting is spectacular, with Makana Mountain standing guard over plants flourishing from the copious rainfall.
At your own pace, navigate the scenic 0.75-mile loop trail. Benches here and there allow stops for rest or contemplation. From a handy free booklet, along with succinct signage, you'll learn that the stereotypical tropical fruits and flowers, eg mango, guava and plumeria, were unknown to ancient Hawaiians.
To get here, turn inland just…
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Lakes Park
This innovative and scenic county park encompasses two original creations: the fragrance garden and a miniature train village. The garden was created in 1991 as a place where visually impaired and wheelchair-bound visitors could smell, feel and even eat herbs and flowers. The gardens were built by volunteers from the Master Gardeners Club, Boy and Girl Scouts and at-risk students from a nearby high school.
The miniature train (7.5in gauge) tootles around the 1.25-mile track every 15 minutes. In case you're looking for something else to do, you can rent boats here, too. Lakeside Marina rents canoes for around US$8 per hour. There are alligators in the lake and on the small…
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Waimea Valley Audubon Center
Across from Waimea Bay Beach Park, this elegant center (a botanical garden by any other name) has more than 5000 species. There are sections of ginger, hibiscus, heliconia, native food plants and medicinal species, including many that are endangered. Waimea sits at the end of the main path through the garden, 0.8 miles from the entrance. The park has centuries-old stone platforms and terraces and replicas of early thatched buildings.
Bus 52 stops on the highway in front on the center, from where it's nearly a half-mile walk inland to the entrance. (From Hale'iwa town, you can catch the bus to the Audubon Center from the bus stop opposite Bank of Hawaii on Kamehameha Hwy.…
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World’s End
Not exactly an island, this 251-acre peninsula was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for residential development in 1889. Carriage paths were laid out and trees were planted, but the houses were never built. Instead, wide grassy meadows attract butterflies and grass-nesting birds. Over the years the area escaped proposals for development as a UN headquarters and a nuclear power plant, and today it is managed by the Trustees of Reservations, which guarantees continued serenity and beauty. The 4-plus miles of tree-lined carriage paths are perfect for walking, mountain biking or cross-country skiing – download a map from the Trustees website. It is accessible by c…
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Jardín de la Bombilla
In this tropically abundant park spreading east of Av Insurgentes, paths encircle the Monumento a Álvaro Obregón, a monolithic shrine to the postrevolutionary Mexican president. The monument was built to house the revolutionary general’s arm, lost in the 1915 Battle of Celaya, but for some reason the limb was cremated in 1989. ‘La Bombilla’ was the name of the restaurant that once occupied this spot where Obregón was assassinated during a banquet in 1928. The killer, José de León Toral, was involved in the Cristero rebellion against the government’s anti-Church policies. In July, the park explodes with color as the main venue for Feria de las Flores, a major flower fes…
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Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens
DC was built on a marsh, a beautiful, brackish, low-lying ripple of sawgrass and steel-blue water, wind-coaxed and tide touched by the inflow of the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay. You’d never know all that now, of course, unless you come to the only national park in the USA devoted to water plants. The aquatic gardens were begun as the hobby of a Civil War veteran and operated for 56 years as a commercial water garden, until the federal government purchased them in 1938. Today this is the only place in the city to see the natural wetlands the District sprang from; look out for beaver dams, clouds of birds and the more traditional manicured grounds, quilted in water lili…
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Serra Retreat
Tile aficionados and hideaway fans should cross PCH and head up to the Serra Retreat, another former Rindge home that is now a religious sanctuary. We recently spotted Martin Sheen, Malibu honorary mayor and a devout Catholic, chatting with one of the Franciscan friars in the lovely ocean-view gardens. You're free to walk around and enjoy the flowers and the views, but respect the tranquil, hushed ambience. The Serra Rd turn-off is about a quarter mile west of the Malibu Pier (look for the sign and tell the guard you're going to the retreat). The road winds through another celebrity enclave where Britney unloaded her home for a cool $12 million in 2007.
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Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden & Park
A tranquility break from clamorous Chinatown, this intimate ‘garden of ease’ illustrates the Taoist symbolism behind the placing of gnarled pine trees, winding covered pathways and ancient limestone formations. Entry includes a fascinating 45-minute guided tour – look out for the lazy turtles bobbing in the jade-colored water – where you’ll learn that everything in the garden reflects balance and harmony. Check the garden’s website for its summer schedule of Friday-evening concerts. Adjacent is the free-entry Dr Sun Yat-Sen Park. Not quite as elaborate as its sister, it’s still a pleasant oasis of whispering grasses, a large fishpond and a small pagoda.
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Vandusen Botanical Garden
Vancouver's favorite ornamental green space, this 22-hectare idyll is a web of paths weaving through 40 small, specialized gardens: The Rhododendron Walk blazes with color in spring, while the nearby Korean Pavilion is a focal point for a fascinating Asian plant collection. There's also a fun Elizabethan maze, walled by 1000 pyramidal cedars, and an intriguing menagerie of marble sculptures. Free tours are offered daily at 2pm. The gardens are a Christmastime magnet, with thousands of fairy lights illuminating the dormant plant life. Check the website to see what's in bloom seasonally and consider dropping by the bustling June Garden Show (www.vancouvergardenshow.com).
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Queen Elizabeth Park
The city’s highest point – it’s 167m above sea level and has panoramic views of the mountain-framed downtown skyscrapers – this 52-hectare park claims to house specimens of every tree native to Canada. Sports fields, manicured lawns and two formal gardens keep the locals happy, and you’ll likely also see wide-eyed couples posing for their wedding photos. Check out the synchronized fountains at the park’s summit, where you’ll also find a hulking Henry Moore bronze called Knife Edge – Two Piece. If you want to be taken out to the ball game, the recently restored Nat Bailey Stadium is a popular summer-afternoon haven for baseball fans.
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