There are many reasons you should visit botanical gardens near you. My wife and I love visiting our local botanical gardens, and we even travel to those out of state — making them destinations.
So, it’s something of a surprise to us when every now and then someone tells us that they think visiting botanical gardens is boring or not worth the money.
Say what? Ha…
First of all, many botanical gardens are cheap or even free to visit. And second, there are so many reasons to visit the botanical gardens near you, or even those that are not!
I could go on and on about the joys of paying our local botanical garden a visit. But let me boil it down to 11 reasons you should visit botanical gardens near you.
#1 – Connect With Nature
As an editor of two magazines and active blogger, I spend a lot of time behind the computer. So, I’ll jump at any opportunity to shut the computer down, put on my sneakers, and head into a botanical garden! It’s sort of like meditation for me, connecting with nature.
It’s amazing how lost I can become when visiting botanical gardens — I get wrapped up in the multisensory environment of a garden. The sight of beautiful plants. The scent of fragrant blooms. The feel of leaves brushing up beside me. The taste of the clean air. The sound of wind whispering through the leaves and branches — it’s sensational psithurism. Don’t know the word psithurism? Believe me, you’re sure to know what it sounds like. And the sound is heavenly…
#2 – See Local Wildlife When You Visit Botanical Gardens Near You
No matter in what part of the world you live, there’s wildlife around you. In Central Florida, our wildlife comes in the form of birds, squirrels, and alligators!
That’s right… When we visit botanical gardens near us, we’re likely to find an alligator or two. Mind you, they’re usually in bodies of water and are normally in areas where they can’t really get too close to visitors. But still… They’re there!
#3 – Gather Ideas For Your Own Garden
One of the many reasons my wife and I love to visit botanical gardens near us is to get inspired on what we can plant in our own garden at home. Keep in mind that the best ideas for our garden will come from visiting gardens near our home, and particularly those in our same USDA Hardiness Zone. As you’d surmise, it’s harder — and perhaps even infeasible — for us to employ ideas from botanical gardens that are located far away, because there may be many plants at a distant garden that we could never dream of growing in our own yard.
Case in point? Dogwood. Oh, how my wife loves dogwood. We enjoy the dogwoods that we’ve seen in botanical gardens located in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and points northward from there. But dogwoods don’t really grow well at all in Central Florida. Believe me… We’ve tried, sadly to no avail. There’s just too much intense heat here during the summertime.
#4 – Support Conservation Efforts By Visiting Your Local Botanical Gardens Near You
They say money doesn’t grow on trees. If only it did, botanical gardens both private and public would have a much better time funding themselves. Sadly, there’s not always enough money in the coffers for a botanical garden to support itself. And that’s where visiting botanical gardens and buying memberships to these places helps them — a ton!
My wife and I bought a membership to our local university’s botanical garden, and we made it a point to visit at least once every few weeks. We’re also fortunate to live less than an hour to a major state-level botanical garden that has free admission. They may not charge a dime to get in, but I assure you they’re counting foot traffic — and the more foot traffic, the more grant funding they receive. So, do your local botanical garden near you a favor and drop on by and stay a while.
#5 – Catch A Plant Show
Sometimes my wife and I plan trips to the botanical gardens near us because we know there’s a special event happening there. And sometimes, we just get lucky — like the time we happened to visit Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia during their Dahlia Show!
We’d never seen so many gorgeous dahlias in one place – and each seemingly more globular, more colorful, more perfect than the previous! Events like these happen all the time at botanical gardens. I bet if you check the event schedule at the botanical gardens near you, there’ll be something worth stopping by to see soon!
#6 – Take Gardening Classes
Botanical gardens aren’t just about showing off trees, plants, and flowers. The folks who run these little slices of gardening paradise want to show you how to grow your own trees, plants, and flowers — successfully!
I’ve yet to visit botanical gardens near me or anywhere else where there aren’t master gardener classes or other tutorials to help make your green thumb a little greener. I hope you’ll check out the list of learning opportunities most surely available at the botanical garden near you.
#7 — Learn About Plants When You Visit Botanical Gardens Near You
Even if taking master gardener classes isn’t your thing, you can still learn about plants when you visit botanical gardens near you. Many of these places aren’t just “show,” they’re also “tell.”
From little plant identifier placards staked into the ground near the bases of shrubs and trees to full-on informational cards and QR code scanning sites, there’s almost always something you can learn about plants at a botanical garden. You just need to stop, look, and read!
#8 – Introduce Kids To Gardening
One of the greatest things our generation can do is to pass the love and stewardship of gardening onto the next generation. We don’t have to be master gardeners or even bona fide green thumbs to do that. But we do have to expose children to the passion and beauty of gardening if we want to raise the next crop of nature keepers.
A terrific way to do that is to take your kids — or nieces and nephews, grandkids, students, or other young ones in your stead — to botanical gardens. It’s there that young kids can get an up-close and hands-on encounter with gardening at its finest, its most vivid, its most magical. And a visit to the botanical gardens near you might just light that spark in a young child who will want to tend a garden of their own.
#9 – Watch Butterflies In Flight
Anyone who knows me knows I’m all about pollinators and especially butterflies. And I’ve visited my share of butterfly gardens over the years. But I think it’s really cool to watch the local native butterflies flitting about in botanical gardens. Just ask my wife. I just get the biggest grin across my face when we’re walking down a trail or sidewalk at the botanical garden only to get stopped in our tracks by a butterfly or two fluttering across our path.
One of the benefits in looking for butterflies when you visit botanical gardens near you is you’ll get the chance to spy the diverse range of butterflies native or endemic to your area. And this can help you better understand the breadth and beauty of the butterfly population in your neck of the woods. Checking them out at the botanical garden can also clue you in on what plants you’ll need in your landscape if you want to attract these most flamboyant of pollinators to your own yard.
#10 – See Rare, Exotic, Or Other Unusual Flowers In Bloom
I can go to our backyard almost any time of the year and find something that’s blooming. Year-round blooms aren’t that unusual in a relatively warm-weather climate like that of Central Florida.
But we don’t have a pungent corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) growing in our yard. Nor do we have the nearly extinct Franklin tree flowers (Franklinia alatamaha) or rare Rothschild’s slipper orchid (Paphiopedilum rothschildianum) blooming out the back door. These are all plants I’ve only ever had the joy of seeing upon visiting botanical gardens near me.
#11 – Buy Plants On Sale When You Visit Botanical Gardens Near You
Sometimes you can take home the plants you see when you visit the botanical gardens near you. Well, no — you can’t literally take them home. Plucking off sprigs, picking flowers, or pocketing seeds and fruit from a botanical garden without permission constitutes theft! But buying plants from the botanical gardens? Well, that’s a legal horse of a different color! And my wife and I love attending plant sales and plant festivals at our local botanical gardens. Each one we’ve visited also has a permanent gift shop on the premises where you can buy plants at the botanical garden virtually all year round.
Oh, and here’s a callback to Reason #4 above. Remember that thing I said about buying a membership to your local botanical garden? Well, often (but not always) purchasing membership to a botanical garden will net you nice discounts on merchandise from their souvenir shop or onsite nursery. This may include the opportunity to buy discount plants there. So, be sure to find out what all the perks are when you become a member of your local botanical gardens!
