Discovery is at play at the Children’s Adventure Garden
Think back to when you were a child. What were some of your most carefree memories? Playing in the yard with the summer sun beating down and the world alive with possibility? Picking flowers in your mother’s garden and trying to catch butterflies? Dozing under an oak tree’s branches as a warm breeze blew and the grass swayed with it?
These fondly remembered moments of discovery and play are what we at the Dallas Arboretum hoped to capture when we opened the Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden in September of 2013.
Where imagination meets education
Find eight acres of themed gardens where both children and adults alike can learn about life and earth sciences. Enjoy 17 awe-inspiring galleries, each focusing on a different science theme—from an immersive nature experience along the boardwalk outside to the Texas Skywalk, where guests can stroll under a tree canopy and play under a waterfall.
Indoors, find the Discovery Center, which uses technology to simulate a plant and soil lab station, and even solve a CSI-style mystery in a mini 3-D theater.
With its endless variety, inspiration and fertile grounds for exploring nature, the Children’s Garden offers families something that can’t be captured in a classroom: experiential education and memories that will last a lifetime. Here are just a few of the Garden’s imaginative features:
The Cascades
Experience the magnificence of one of nature’s crown jewels: a cascading waterfall. Kids can walk underneath it or look out from atop the cascades.
Texas Native Wetlands
This gallery is a living, breathing demonstration of eco-science at play. Kids discover the importance of wetlands in helping control flooding, cleaning the water and providing a home for a diversity of species of both plants and animals.
The Amazing Secret Garden
It’s every kid’s dream come true: a real-life maze! As they wander along winding paths of tall bushes and learn cardinal directions for navigation, they encounter whisper tubes, a floating granite ball and dance chimes on their way to the center and the castle flag.
Walk in the Clouds
Kids will discover what it’s like to be a squirrel or bird in our version of an aerial bounce house, with a special 32-foot fabricated tree suspended over the trail below.
Bring the family to the Children’s Garden and let kids be, well, kids as they discover, explore and, most importantly, play! After all, this is the Year of the Children’s Garden, so check often for upcoming tutorials and events. Want to buy tickets? Click here.
Interested in getting more involved at the The Rory Meyer’s Children’s Adventure Garden? Enthusiastic volunteers are needed for the Information Booth and the OmniGlobe as well as gallery hosts for all exhibits.
Young or old, it’s fun to be a kid again and experience the Children’s Garden with our most energetic and curious visitors.
You can reap the benefits of all the Children’s Garden has to offer and give back to the community by volunteering. It’s great opportunity for people at all stages of life—high-school students who need community service hours, adults who want to explore alongside their children and empty-nesters looking for something to do.
Volunteers are needed seven days a week for 9AM to 1PM or 1PM to 5PM shifts. Training is required in most positions, and though there are a few indoor opportunities, most of the positions are outdoors.
To learn more about the needs and benefits of volunteering, please contact the Dallas Arboretum’s volunteer office at 214-515-6561 or e-mail at volunteers@dallasarboretum.org.
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