The West Virginia Botanic Garden wasn't quite blooming when we visited in the spring, and the trees…read morewere still bare, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Plus, it's free. I mean, come on! How can you not like a free botanic garden? Plus, it's the only botanical garden in the state of West Virginia. Alright, that settles it! This place is great. It was nice to walk around this free and unique botanical garden, and see what we could see.
If you start at the education center, you can follow a path by foot that will take you down to the Children's Adventure Garden, the Butterfly Garden and the Secret Garden. But if you're not up for walking, you can also drive there. There's a parking lot that's right next to all of those areas.
I have children, so we headed straight to the children's garden. It's tiny and meant for tiny people, which I sometimes forget my children are not anymore. This children's garden would be perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. There are rocks to climb, a tunnel to go through, a mini rock wall to scale, and some chairs to sit in. There's also a sensory table with some sand and shovels, which did not impress my almost-tween child who was playing with it. But it's hard to impress a tween, you know? I think young children will love all of the children's garden (even the sandbox sensory table) because young children love things more easily than us older people.
The botanical garden has a couple of different trails that you can follow that we did not during our visit. There is a fairy garden here, as well as a few bridges, an overlook and a big pond. If we had more time and energy, we definitely would have followed the trails to see all of these things! We did discover some hammocks that were connected to a couple of trees, which was a nice surprise. It was cool to just rock gently, supported by trees, breathing in the air that the trees were providing.
