The Park

Farmer Brown's Farm | Gardens

Gardens

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Mr. McGregor's Garden

This rustic garden brings Beatrix Potter’s beloved Tale of Peter Rabbit to life at Fairytale Town. Featuring an arbor-shaded, gated workshop area, the garden is a frequent location for hands-on learning workshops at Fairytale Town. Over 40,000 school children visit each year to learn about seed germination, worm composting, nutrition, and basic gardening skills. For more about our field trips, click here.

The garden adjacent to the workshop area features raised beds of seasonal vegetables, fruits and flowers, with trellised vines in the center of several beds. Children can often discover tomatoes, eggplants, artichokes, beans, squash, and other vegetables growing in these beds.

Bordering the workshop area is a small herb garden featuring chives, lavender, rosemary, mint and thyme. Children are encouraged to identify each herb with signs mounted in this garden. Annual herbs and flowers are often added to this bed.

Children can also water the garden with child-sized watering cans. Children are encouraged to find water droplet signs throughout the garden in dry beds where water is needed most. Sometimes our plants have plenty of water, so the watering cans will be put away.

The Alphabet Garden

Planted in the summer of 2000, the Alphabet Garden at Fairytale Town is a perennial source of pleasure and discovery for families. This garden gives plants and flowers the power to teach literacy to Fairytale Town's guests: each letter of the alphabet is flanked by plants that start with that letter in a changing seasonal display. Children can view grasses, perennial and annual flowers and several trees in this L-shaped garden. Children can also water the plants in the Alphabet Garden.

The Alphabet Garden currently features:
Agapanthus, Bird of Paradise, Candytuft, Coral Bells, Cherry Tree, Dusty Miller, Echinacea, Feverfea, Geranium, Hummingbird Bush, Ice Plant, Jasmine, Kniphofia, Lambs Ear, Magnolia Tree, Mondo Grass, Nandina, Newport Escallonia, Orchid Rockrose, Potato Vine, Quince, Rosemary, Sea Pink, Sedum, Thyme, Umbrella Plant, Verbena, Wisteria Tree, Xylosma, Yarrow, Yellow Eyed Grass, Zebra Grass.

The Japanese Garden

The Japanese Garden at Fairytale Town was first installed in 1961. The centerpiece of the garden is a statue of Urashima Taro – the Fisherman and the Turtle. This ancient tale features a noble young fisherman who is rewarded for rescuing a turtle by being taken to a fabulous undersea kingdom where he lives for many years in the company of a beautiful princess.

Largely sponsored by the Senator Lions Club and other generous community members, the Japanese Garden has been rejuvenated with new architecture and landscaping, and will continue to foster the tranquil theme of its predecessor, with elements such as a waterfall pond, an open area surrounded with beautiful landscaping, Asian-inspired plantings and stone garden architecture and benches.

This garden is home to a variety of plants often featured in Asian gardening, including a Magnolia soleangeana, a breathtaking early-spring bloomer with fragrant cream and pink flowers. Cherry trees blossom in spring as well, and ginkos provide lush green shade in the summer. Their golden leaves float in the pond in the fall, a bright contrast to the deep reds of eight Japanese maples situated throughout the garden. The central feature of the garden is a forty-five-year-old mature maple. White Japanese anemones bloom in early fall against a backdrop of bamboo. Four species of bamboo frame the perimeter of the garden. In addition to traditional Asian plantings of camellias and azaleas, miniature conifers have been added.

Another recent acquisition to the garden completes the traditional Asian "Three Friends of Winter" plants. These "Friends of Winter" flourish even in the coldest months, with the plum tree blooming so early in spring it often blooms in the snow. The other two "friends" are bamboo and pine, both evergreens.

The garden is not only a place of beauty and reflection, but also a place to learn for small Fairytale Town guests. A variety of arts, crafts and gardening projects take place in the garden year round.

Throughout the Park

In addition to the thematic gardens in the park, you will also see 26 varieties of old Garden Roses, as well as 18 varieties of Bamboo throughout Fairytale Town's 2.5 acres.