You can visit Raleigh’s rare plant garden on limited May weekends. Here’s when
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- The Juniper Level Botanic Garden in Raleigh opens to the public only on select weekends.
- The 28-acre garden contains over 27,000 plant types and extensive rare plant collections.
- Admission is free during open-house days, with a $5 parking fee redeemable on plants.
A Raleigh garden is home to one of the rarest collections of plants in the world. And, for a few weekends out of the year, it’s open to the public to explore.
Springtime weekends at this 28-acre property, which includes the Juniper Level Botanic Garden and Plant Delights Nursery in southern Wake County, have begun.
The botanic garden opens to the public the first three weekends in May for springtime hours.
The garden features more than 27,000 types of plants, including some that have yet to be named, and is home to some of the world’s largest living collections of ferns, yucca, sedge, false indigo and spider lily, among other species, according to the garden’s website.
Juniper Level Botanic Garden plants
“I created this craziness,” said Tony Avent, founder of the garden, in a previous interview with The News & Observer. “We’ve done 100 trips, collecting plant material. We bring it back. We propagated it. We trial it. We research it. We photograph it. And then if it’s really awesome, we propagate it and share it with other people.”
The gardens feature two waterfalls, rare woodland perennials, a grotto garden, a large rock bog with carnivorous plants and picnic area.
“The Juniper Level Botanic Garden has got one of the best plant collections anywhere in the world,” Mark Weathington, director of the JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University, previously told The N&O. “And they have one of the best native plant collections, exotic plant collections and they really work on helping conserve the genetics of rare plants.”
Raleigh botanic garden hours
Visitors can schedule an appointment to visit the park or wait until a handful of “open house” weekends. Two “winter” weekends were held in early March.
There are three weekends planned for spring and two each for summer and fall this year.
- Friday, May 1 - Sunday, May 3
- Friday, May 8 - Sunday, May 10
- Friday, May 15 - Sunday, May 17
- Friday, July 10 - Sunday, July 12
- Friday, July 17 - Sunday, July 19
- Friday, Sept. 18 - Sunday, Sept. 20
- Friday, Sept. 25 - Sunday, Sept. 27
The botanical garden is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the open house days.
Admission is free, but there is a $5 fee to park that’s redeemable as $5 off the purchase of a plant.
Portions of this story were previously published in The News & Observer.
