There’s no place like this garden.
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Music by Jason Shaw at AudionautiX
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Featured image courtesy of TripAdvisor.
Hey there, Garden Lovers,
Today is March 3, and this is A Garden a Day with Mædunbroc Gardens. Thank you for listening.
Today’s garden began as a dream as so many gardens do. In 1982, the Wichita Area Garden Council and the City of Wichita began a collaboration that resulted in today’s garden — Botanica — The Wichita Gardens in Wichita, Kansas.
Botanica opened in 1987 with four gardens and a library. Today, Botanica includes more than thirty individual gardens on twenty acres with 4,000 unique plant species, and more than fifty works of art including Sculptures and fountains.
Two of their signature gardens include the Downing Children’s Garden dedicated in 2011 and the Chinese Friendship Garden dedicated in 2015.
The children’s garden features several themed areas including the Monster Woods with not-too-scary faces carved into tree trunks, a working water pump to make a big splash, grandaddy’s musical maze with large musical instruments for children to make some joyful noise as they enjoy time in nature, and grandma’s farmhouse with toy furniture, play food and pots and pans. And there are many more fun things to explore in the children’s garden.
Near the children’s garden is a restored Allan Herschell carousel that is open for rides.
Children will also enjoy the Gene E. Spear Railroad Garden. A model passenger train makes its way through a tiny town and village. The train operates from March through September, weather permitting.
The Chinese Garden of Friendship was designed in two parts — the earthly world and the heavenly world. The earthly world includes the entrance and courtyard and represents the area where people live and work. The other half of the garden includes a waterfall, koi pond, stream, and Thousand-Foot bridge. This section of the garden represents the ideal or the heavenly world.
Botanica also includes a butterfly garden and a 2800 square foot butterfly house. Botanica is on the migratory path of the monarch butterfly, and visitors will find the monarch as the most common butterfly in this garden.
One of the first gardens planted at Botanica was the Shakespeare Garden. It is a blend of formal and cottage gardens common to the Elizabethan era. Many of the featured plants were mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.
Another early garden is the Jayne Milburn Aquatic Collection at Boeing Pond. Water lilies, irises, hyacinths, and cattails delight visitors to this wetland environment in landlocked Kansas.
Other gardens include a wildflower meadow, a rose garden with 350 rose bushes, a sensory garden, woodlands, a peony collection of more than 100 cultivars, and so many more.
In spring, visitors will enjoy more than 60,000 tulips and 125,000 daffodils.
In summer, 20,000 annuals color the gardens only to be met by more than 5,000 chrysanthemums in autumn.
In winter, 12,000 pansies continue to color the Botanica world.
The garden offers classes and events throughout the year including a Book Club and a free program for Seniors with topics important for the more mature phase of life. Preschool age children have their own program, too. Little Sprouts — a story time for ages three to five — happens on Wednesdays.
Botanica is Open 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Saturday and is closed on Sundays and most major holidays.
Botanica looks like a lovely place to visit.
Well, that’s about it for today. I do hope you enjoyed this episode.
As a reminder, I release a new episode every single day. You can find past episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts or you can find them at our website — agardenaday.com.
Thanks for listening. If all goes well, I’ll be right back here tomorrow. See you then!
To learn more about Botanica, check out these links:
https://www.visitwichita.com/listing/botanica-wichita/25663/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanica,_The_Wichita_Gardens
https://empoweredsenior.org/locations/botanica-wichita-gardens/
https://midwestwanderer.com/botanica-the-wichita-gardens/
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