Brookside Gardens
 | This article has no lead section. (February 2016) |
 |
The Brookside Gardens (50 acres (20 ha)) are public gardens located within Wheaton Regional Park, at 1800 Glenallan Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland. The gardens themselves are open daily without charge. However, certain annual events there are held that may charge a fee. The gardens hosts a "Garden of Lights" exhibit that features a light display during the holiday season.[1] The garden grounds were originally part of a landscaping and garden center on a small farm owned by Stadler Nurseries.[2]
Major features of the garden are as follows:
- Aquatic Garden – water-loving plants with two ponds and gazebo.
- Azalea Garden – over 300 varieties of azaleas represented by 2,000 plants. Also rhododendrons, witchhazels, hollies, Japanese andromeda, sweet-box, skimmia, and shade-tolerant perennials.
- Butterfly Garden – Seasonal in summer only. Admission fee.
- Children’s “School's Outside” Garden
- Conservatories – seasonal displays and special exhibits. The surrounding garden contains a collection of unusual conifers and groundcovers.
- Fragrance Garden
- Gude Garden – a Japanese-style landscape with bamboo, beech, unusual conifers, dogwood, and groundcovers, as well as an island teahouse overlooking the ponds.
- Maple Terrace – raised beds within a planting of ‘Suminagashi’ Japanese maples.
- a Japanese teahouse overlooking a pond stocked with koi.
- Nature center – with exhibits on local wildlife. Parking lot has a separate entrance.
- Perennial Garden – wisterias, roses, Jasmine stephanense, buddleia, and Prunus x cistena, allium, geranium, sedum, panicum, lespedeza, calamagrostis, anemones, asters, acanthus, and agastache, etc.
- Reflection Terrace – a memorial to the ten individuals killed in the October 2002 Washington D.C. area sniper attacks.[3]
-
The Sniper Memorial at Brookside Gardens -
Names of victims at the Sniper Memorial -
View from the Reflection Terrace over the Aquatic Garden -
Close-up of the inscription at the pond at the Reflection Terrace -
Dedication Plaque at the Reflection Terrace
- Rock Garden – spring flowering bulbs with grasses and conifers.
- Rose Garden – all types of roses, including hybrid tea, rugosa hybrids, grandiflora, English, miniature, floribunda, shrub, groundcover, polyantha, climber, Gallica, hybrid musk, and the garden rose.
- Trial Garden – spring flowering bulbs, then summer displays of new and unusual plant varieties.
- Woodland Walk – forested wetland with bald cypress, tulip poplar, spicebush, and groundcover of mayapple, fern, and skunk cabbage. A native plant garden includes approximately 124 species and cultivars of Maryland native plants.
- Yew Garden – a garden room within yew hedges.
A section of the gardens including the Gude Garden and the Japanese tea house closed for renovation in May 2013, and are scheduled to open approximately eight months later.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Brookside Gardens". Montgomery County Department of Parks. Retrieved 2013-10-22.
- ^ "Stadler Nurseries - A Growing Family Business Since 1932". Stadler Nurseries. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
- ^ Adrian Higgins (March 24, 2005). "A Garden of Hope and Renewal in a Violent World". Washington Post. p. H1.