6 best public gardens in Wisconsin

Blooming with tulips, roses, and more, these gardens in Wisconsin will have you in awe of nature’s beauty.

What better way to calm the mind than by taking a stroll in a manicured garden? From Green Bay to Milwaukee, botanical gardens in Wisconsin offer just that. The gardens on this list are open between late spring and late fall, giving you plenty of time to check out the plants, flowers, and trees. The inspirations for these beautiful settings stem from beyond Wisconsin’s borders—England, Asia, and other places across the globe. For an up-to-date tracker on what’s in bloom and when, check out the gardens’ social media and websites, as nature is not always consistent from year to year.

Here are six public gardens in Wisconsin and what you can expect to see (and smell!) there.

1. Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison

This 16-acre garden on the far East Side of Madison is open year-round. Its features include a sunken English-style garden with an 80-foot reflecting pool, an herb garden, a few meadows, a walkway with about 100 native birch trees, and a rose garden that experiences its peak in June.

Anchored by a Thai pavilion (the Royal Thai Pavilion) that’s surrounded by a Thai-style tropical garden crafted from hardy Wisconsin plants, the pavilion in this garden is the only one of its kind in the continental U.S. It was a gift from the Thai government.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens features a Thai pavilion surrounded by Thai-style gardens. (Sharon Vanorny)

2. Boerner Botanical Gardens, Hales Corners

This 40-acre garden, which was founded 41 years ago in a southwestern suburb of Milwaukee, just a 30-minute drive from downtown Milwaukee, runs a lively event calendar. This includes Wednesday walks between May and September (from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) focused on a different topic every week (such as roses or daylilies) and Thursday-night live-music concerts. Boerner Botanical Gardens is open between late April and early November and features many gardening styles—such as a rock garden, a rose garden, an arboretum, annuals, perennials, and a bog.

Springtime tulips are a huge draw for Boerner Botanical Gardens near Milwaukee. (Boerner Botanical Gardens)

3. Rotary Botanical Gardens, Janesville

This year, this 20-acre garden in Janesville unveiled a brand-new greenhouse. It’s also the fourth season of daylilies and dahlias (of which there are 100 different varieties) and the debut of sunflowers in the Children’s Garden, which provides fun photo opportunities. Between May and September, the garden hosts its “What’s In Bloom” tours, happening on select Wednesdays of each month at 10 a.m. Spanning 26 various garden styles, the themed gardens here include Japanese, French Formal, Scottish, and English Cottage. In May, a grove of cherry trees transforms into the gardens’ Cherry Blossom Walk.

A bridge over a pond in Rotary Botanical Gardens creates a spot to wander among nature. (Marsha Mood)

4. Paine Art Center and Gardens, Oshkosh

This three-acre garden surrounds the Paine Mansion, a Tudor Revival home commissioned by Nathan and Jessie Paine in 1927, only to have its construction halted by the Great Depression. During the 1940s, the Paines reopened the property as a public space. Many art exhibits are hosted here, including the current shows “Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry” and “Black Ash Baskets: A Local Collection.” Both run through June 29, 2025. May brings the Spring Tulip Showcase, when thousands of tulips are in bloom, and on Aug. 1, “The Nature of Light” debuts (through October 26, 2025), a nighttime exhibit of illuminated sculptures.

5. Green Bay Botanical Garden, Green Bay

Home to the largest spring blooms show in Wisconsin, this 47-acre garden’s display of 350,000 flowers (daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops) kicks off around May 1 and lasts through the month. A new exhibit also debuts in May: “Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea,” featuring sculptures born out of plastic debris from the Pacific Ocean, runs from May 2, 2025-Sept. 2, 2025. There’s also a Children’s Garden, a rose garden, remnants of Larsen Orchard (which used to be on the site), a Vietnam Veterans Garden, an herb garden, an English Cottage-style garden, and more.

The Meredith B. Rose Cottage and its surrounding gardens at Green Bay Botanical Garden is a veritable trip to the English countryside. (John Oates Photography)

6. Allen Centennial Garden, Madison

This 2.5-acre garden on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus packs a lot of activities into a tiny space, particularly on Saturday mornings between June 1 and Aug. 3. These include build-your-own-bouquet workshops, two guided tours, and a variety of workshops in everything from creating plant-based dyes to flower pounding on cotton. Students in the university’s Horticulture Department oversee the garden, which functions as a teaching garden and is also home to the former Agricultural Dean’s Residence, a Victorian Gothic mansion.

Allen Centennial Garden on the UW-Madison campus is a great example of flowers and plants blooming in an urban setting. (Nicole Golownia)

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.