Green Bay Botanical Garden’s 47 acres of display gardens and natural areas capture the beauty of northeast Wisconsin’s four distinct and wonderful seasons. You will enjoy amazing beauty and adventure as you discover outstanding architecture that sets the stage for an all-star performance by plants specifically chosen for their ability to thrive in the upper Midwest. The Garden offers something for all ages, in all seasons.
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This 2.5-acre outdoor wonderland connects nature, play, and learning, and features a variety of accessible outdoor areas, awe-inspiring structures, and an overall nature-based story. It creates a garden experience for everyone that promises to cultivate, educate, and inspire a lifetime connection to the natural world.
It’s hard not to notice the iconic Les & Dar Stumpf Hobbit House Restroom set into the ground in this area. Equally captivating plants echo its quirks. Tall and stately evergreens, twisted shrubs, and even a speckle or two of annuals tie everything together around this sustainable restroom.
While you’re strolling up to the Fischer Visitor Center during the spring and summer, feast your eyes upon an array of lively spring bulbs and a bountiful display of annual plants. Duck into the shady reprieve to take in even more beauty before even officially entering the Garden.
The Larsen Children’s Corner in the lower level of the Fischer Visitor Center is the perfect place to read a book, put together a giant puzzle, play a garden game with your family, or put on a puppet show. This indoor children’s area provides a quiet place to cool down during the summer or a cozy spot to warm up after a walk in the winter. The Children’s Library is stocked with stories about plants, insects, frogs, birds, nature, gardening, and more that visitors are welcome to peruse while in the Children’s Corner.
A mixture of ornamental lilies, wispy grasses, bold annuals, and even a living evergreen archway create a grand “red carpet” entrance into the Garden. Your eyes are then captivated by the never-ending sea of perennial color all spring, summer, and even into fall.
You’ll see one of the Garden’s many showstoppers, the Mabel Thome Fountain, cradled by courtly Adirondack crabapples in the spring and an annual bed packed full with colors in the summer.
The Schierl Wellhouse boasts a stately brick building and an actual well beneath its foundation. It takes center stage during the spring and summer months with its bulb display and invigorating annual show. Hydrangeas swarm up, down, and to the sides of the building for breathtaking views from every angle, including the Herb Display Garden, which sits below. This area features a large variety of medicinal, pollinator, drinkable, culinary, and stress-relief herbs as well as the ever-popular fairy garden. Local volunteers from the Northeast Wisconsin Unit of the Herb Society of America help tend these herbs in spring, summer, and fall.
The Larsen Orchard Remnant is a shady oasis of original apple trees from the Larsen Orchard, some even dating back to World War II. A brilliant display of shade plants provides tinges of greens and grays along with delicate whispers of pastel-flowering perennials.
A vast display of daffodils lights up the ground during the spring months. The colorful foliage, featuring greens, purples, grays, and blues, carries the rest of this garden well into summer and fall. Vining structures, lined with trumpet vines, grapevines, and Dutchman’s pipe offer bold leaf sizes to create even more depth to the Garden.
A massive covered bridge entwined with variegated kiwi vines greets you as you enter the lower half of the Garden. Thousands of daffodils greet you in the spring and shade-tolerant plants sprawl across the creek bed as you cross the bridge in the summer and fall.
An absolutely breathtaking spectacle of greens, yellows, blues, and grays embrace the King Shade Garden. Hostas abound by the hundreds. The collection features a section hybridized by local hosta breeders, Herb and Gladys King, after whom this garden is named. The pea gravel path weaves among these hostas along with every other imaginable shade plant. Tucked into the woodland edge is a vine-covered Spring House Ruin. The soaring oak trees offer abundant shade during the summer months along with an exquisite autumn experience.
Further in, daffodils coat the stony ground of the Frederick Baer Perennial Garden during spring, shortly followed by a medley of peonies and a true mix of gardener-favorite perennials. A rustic retreat awaits at the Jenquine Pavilion, built with salvaged barn timbers. Sprays of goldenrod, cone flowers, bugbane, and beebalm entice visitors with its country charm. A split rail fence lines the edge and ties the garden together all season long.
The Vietnam Veterans Garden boasts the distinction of being a xeriscape garden, requiring little to no water during the hottest and driest summer months. Pops of bold reds, blues, yellows, and oranges coat this garden all throughout the summer. While in spring, a blanket of daffodils lines the hillside.
Across from the hillside, hundreds of daylilies make their annual debut in the months of July and August in the Daylily Display beds. The Bay Area Daylily Society (BAD Buds) labors over the orange, yellow, purple, and pink daylilies so they can put on their colorful showing every year.
One of the oldest developed areas, the Kress Oval Garden, is designed as a contemporary rose garden. Mostly featuring an array of perennials with a smattering of accent roses, this garden is further encompassed with a living wall of arborvitae trees. Remember to visit George as he serenades Marguerite with his violin and rub Marguerite’s earlobe while making a wish!
At the far edge, a beautiful, Grecian dome named the Stumpf Belvedere is paired with an equally impressive annual bed display. The views are impeccable from any angle.
Easily one of the fan-favorite areas for guests, this garden, modeled after historical English gardens across the pond, features a cacophony of brightly colored perennials mixed with tastefully placed annuals. Hundreds of pollinators and humans alike are captivated by the intricacies of the plants dotted around the garden.
This garden showcases yet another quintessential garden plant: the rose. A collection of hybrid tea, grandiflora, floribunda, and shrub roses mesmerizes the eyes. They can be best seen during their peak flushes during parts of June, July, and August. There’s also a quaint, yellow Scandinavian gazebo, the Kaftan Lusthaus, which is surrounded with accenting annuals. Local volunteers from the NEW Rose Society help take care of these rose in spring, summer, and fall.
One of the largest displays of dwarf conifers and one of two American Confier Society reference gardens in Wisconsin, the Arendt Conifer Garden is packed to the brim with dwarf conifers. They range in all shapes, sizes, and colors that conifers can offer. This collection can be seen year-round while various low-lying perennials and bulbs intermingle among the conifers during the growing months.
A cathedral of looming, mature trees casts the Woodland Garden in a shaded cloak. All of the plants, albeit a few decorative containers, are native to the state of Wisconsin and truly demonstrates the beauty that this great state offers.
An enchanting figure-eight elegantly mirrors the subtle hues of this shady memorial grove. Sprightly pink redbuds and thousands of daffodils usher in spring while soft-toned perennials carry it through summer.
The grove was designed to provide opportunities to remember loved ones and offers a place for peaceful contemplation. The focal point is a stainless-steel infinity loop supported by seven pillars. Donors making a memorial gift to the Garden can have the name of a loved one engraved on one of these pillars.
The Schneider Family Grand Garden boasts sprays of color cascading along gentle slopes. Native and prairie plants make up the vibrant hues along with a lush turf grass bowl for recreation. The vine-covered Fischer Family Overlook Arbor at the top of the hill and the Billie Kress Amphitheater at the bottom give an air of refinement to the already booming area.
The overlook provides accessible and covered seating for guests during concerts and performances. Surrounded by gorgeous blooms in late summer and fall, the bowl-like Billie Kress Amphitheater and Cowles Terrace area offer spectacular seating no matter where you sit. Off to the side, the WPS Foundation Plaza shows a healthy mixture of perennials, trees, and shrubs around the concessions building.
If there is anywhere to be once the spring season hits, it’s our nationally accredited Magnolia Grove. A plethora of magnolias make up a symphony of delicate pinks, whites, yellows, and maroon hues as well as many hardy types that can handle our chilly location – zone 5 of the USDA hardiness zone map. Giant shade trees hang and twist into the grove for a much-needed retreat from the sun during blazing summer days.
Green Bay Botanical Garden hosts three trial sites. The All-American Selection (AAS) trial garden for annual plants, the American Rose Trial for Sustainability (ARTS) for roses, and Budburst.
The Partnership Garden, comprised of the All-American Selections Display Garden, is skirted by a white picket fence and demonstrates a variety of vegetable and annual display beds. Local volunteers from Aspiro carefully help tend these plants as well as donate some of the produce to local food pantries.
The Matthew Schmidt Wall Garden is a regal, formal garden of boldly colored perennials, trees, and shrubs that surrounds the Wangerin Pavilion. A living wall borders the garden with perennials and creates a jaw-dropping tapestry of colors.
After entering the center, the KC Stock Lobby acts as the entrance to the Cornerstone Foundation Hall, which is the place for many events from weddings to business meetings. There’s access to the Roger Simurdiak Patio and Jan Wos Garden, which offer privacy in a border of Norway spruce trees and beauty with hydrangeas, low-lying evergreens, and soft-colored perennials.
Downstairs, the George Kress Suite of Classrooms offers customizable spaces for classes, garden club meetings, and so much more, including access to the outdoors via the Mabel Thome Patio.
Like a greeting from an old friend, the Four Seasons bed welcomes you warmly to the Garden. Four seasons of interest mingle among the bed: dynamic hues of tree bark in the winter, a flourishing spring display of daffodils and tulips, speckles of colorful perennials and annuals in the summer, and vivid fall colors.
As you approach the Garden’s circle driveway entrance, you’ll see a fine exhibit of hostas mingled with coralbells and other shade loving plants. This area is entirely cared for by volunteers that belong to the Green & Gold Hosta Society.
920.490.9457
info@gbbg.org
2600 Larsen Rd
Green Bay, WI 54303
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will be moved indoors with limited seating due to Friday’s weather forecast. Tickets are no longer available. We apologize for any inconvenience!
The Bell Children's Garden is now closed through mid-January during WPS Garden of Lights.
