Tour the North Carolina Botanical Garden

Spring is in full bloom and in Chapel Hill there is no better way to experience it than North Carolina’s Botanical Garden. Full of fine art exhibits, nature trails, carnivorous plant collections, and cutting-edge green technology, the Gardens are a functioning, sustainable facility that is dedicated to researching the native plants of the state.

Over a hundred years ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hired its first botany professor, a man named William Coker, who would make it in the history books. He started planting trees and shrubs, unaware, of course, that his fledgling garden would bloom into the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Nowadays, the area where William Coker started it all is known as the Coker Arboretum; it’s just one of the many sections to the Gardens. Some of Coker’s Arboretum’s main features are a 300 foot-long vine arbor with an adjacent stone circle, as well as redwood trees, conifers, and daylilies.

Some of the main attractions at the gardens you can tour are the carnivorous plant collection, native water gardens, and the mountain habitat garden featuring the mountainous areas of the Appalachians and the abundancy of wildflowers that make the region famous.

The Gardens also have an extensive network of trails that snake through the Carolina woods in a variety of terrain and through a diverse collection of fauna. Two loops make up the trails, called the Streamside Trail and the Oak-Hickory Trail. Streamside is the easier of the two as Oak-Hickory Trail traverses hills. Either way, you’ll catch sight of thriving woodland wildflowers, dogwoods, and trilliums this spring, while the lacy canopy above provides cool shade and the rare passage of alluring, twinkling sunlight. Each trail will take 15-45 minutes to complete, depending on your pace and path.

You’ll find a lot to do here, but more importantly, you’ll find peace of mind, calmness, clarity, and the vision of earthly beauty that the Botanical Garden paints for us. Schedule your private tour today by visiting the website or just show up; admission is free! The North Carolina Botanical Garden also has free tours on the first Saturday of each month. If you’re stay coincides with this, don’t miss out!