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Brookside Gardens is Montgomery County’s incomparable, award-winning 50-acre public display garden located within Wheaton Regional Park. Included in the gardens are several distinct areas: Aquatic Garden, Azalea Garden, Butterfly Garden, Children’s Garden, Rose Garden, Japanese Style Garden with labyrinth, Trial Garden, Rain Garden, and the Woodland Walk. The Formal Gardens areas include a Perennial Garden, Yew Garden, the Maple Terrace, and Fragrance Garden. Brookside Gardens also features two Conservatories for year-round enjoyment.
Conservatories and Surrounding Gardens | The Formal Gardens | Brookside Gardens Introductions | Visitor Map of Brookside Gardens
Conservatories and Surrounding Gardens
The glass-covered Conservatories house a large tropical plant collection and provide seasonal plant color displays that include spring, summer, fall, and holiday shows. They are also used for special exhibits such as the Wings of Fancy Live Butterfly Exhibit (closed for 2023). The garden surrounding the Conservatories displays a collection of unusual conifers and ground covers as well as several specimen trees. Adjacent to the Conservatories is a Rain Garden.
The Trial Garden
The Trial Garden is located along a hillside overlooking the east side of the Conservatories. In spring, over 10,000 spring flowering bulbs are featured followed by summer displays of new and unusual plant varieties, imaginative design ideas, and changing theme gardens. These six asymmetrically curved beds formed by brick walls of varying heights are currently host to a vegetable display bed, a Low Maintenance Bed, and a bed featuring annuals from the All-American Selections Program.
Aquatic Garden
This garden features Japanese iris and many other water-loving plants along the banks of two ponds. A gazebo, located at the edge of the Azalea Garden, overlooks the Aquatic Garden. The Anderson Pavilion, built in 1991, sits on a small island in the upper pond. Thousands of daffodils grow along the creek from the Visitors Center Garden entrance to the Conservatory Garden entrance.
Azalea Garden
The Azalea Garden is a semi-wooded area that features over 300 varieties of azaleas represented by 2,000 plants. Rhododendrons, witchhazels, hollies, Japanese andromeda, sweet-box, skimmia, bulbs, and a large assortment of shade-tolerant perennials are also featured. Early azaleas begin blooming in mid-April, with the others commencing bloom near Memorial Day. This sequence provides a longer season of bloom than you’d see in typical home landscapes. Azaleas are planted in masses of a single variety to give maximum impact. A network of paved and mulched paths allows access to the plantings.
Outdoor Butterfly Garden
This warm and sunny habitat for butterflies is the perfect place to learn about butterfly gardening. Native and cultivated plants supporting the butterfly lifecycle fill this walled retaining bed from May through late fall. Butterflies native to Maryland can be viewed up close in all stages of the lifecycle, from the eggs to the caterpillars to the chrysalides to the adults. The outdoor butterfly garden is located on the west side of the conservatories.
Children’s Garden
Experience a unique mini-Maryland in our new children’s garden, Explore Maryland! From the mountains to the ocean, Explore Maryland! is an opportunity for children to explore a beautiful garden, pretend among mountain boulders, play in an old farmhouse, cook in a kitchen, boat in the sea, and gain knowledge about Maryland’s natural history, flora, and fauna.
The Rose Garden
From the months of June through September, approximately 100 different rose varieties interplanted with ornamental grasses and perennials provide a radiant profusion of color. The formal geometric presentation of this garden invites spectators to closely view and indulge in the fragrances of this popular plant. Reflecting pools, sitting nooks, and a shaded pergola encourages visitors to stay awhile.
Examples of all types of roses can be found in this garden including hybrid tea, rugosa hybrids, grandiflora, English, miniature, floribunda, shrub, groundcover, polyantha, climber, Gallica, hybrid musk, and the garden rose. Other plants of interest in this garden are crape myrtle or Lagerstroemia x ‘Apalachee’, Amsonia hubrechtii, or blue star, and Fagus sylvatica ‘Rohan Obelisk’, or upright purple beech. Look for the many All-America Rose Selections awarded by the American Rose Society.
Gude Garden: Japanese Style Garden & Labyrinth
The Gude Garden was created beginning in 1972 as a memorial to Adolph Gude, Sr. who was a prominent local nurseryman. M-NCPPC landscape architect Hans Hanses designed the Japanese-style landscape of soft rolling hills and ponds as well as the Japanese Teahouse overlooking the ponds.
The Teahouse is located on an island planted with bamboo, unusual conifers, and ground covers. The Gude family donated many of the specimen trees and shrubs, including the beech trees, blue Atlas cedars, southern magnolia, and most of the conifers on the island. The Kousa dogwood collection was added in 1991. Over the years, the ponds have become home to many species of wildlife and colorful Japanese carp (koi) donated from private collections. In 2006, a labyrinth was installed by staff and volunteers. The ponds and dams located in the Gude Garden were repaired and restored to their original beauty and function in 2014 and a new Labyrinth was installed.
Rain Garden
A new Rain Garden was installed in the fall of 2007 and planting was completed in the spring of 2008. It is located to the right of the entrance to the Conservatories in the area that was formerly called the Rock Garden. The rain garden was designed by Ann English of the Low Impact Development Center.
For more information on Rain Gardens and Rainscapes visit the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection Rainscapes.
The Woodland Walk
This one-acre garden highlights the existing forested wetland with its bald cypress, canopy of tulip poplar, understory of spicebush, and groundcover of mayapple, fern, and skunk cabbage. A newly planted native plant garden expands the palette of plants, with approximately 124 species and cultivars of Maryland native plants.
A boardwalk running the length of the garden provides an observation deck and two overlook areas for garden viewing and also serves as an accessible pathway between Brookside Gardens and the Brookside Nature Center. It is located at the far-east end of the gardens across from the Conservatory Parking Lot.
The Formal Gardens
The formal gardens are a series of distinct rooms that include the Perennial Garden, Yew Garden, Maple Terrace, and Fragrance Garden. They are linked by a flagstone walk with a focused view up to the Wedding Gazebo.
The Perennial Garden
The Perennial Garden consists of the walled space closest to the Conservatory building, with planted beds inside the perimeter wall and a pool in the center. The beds contain tree Wisterias, roses, Jasmine stephanense, Buddleia, and Prunus x cistena for structural interest behind the seasonal progression of Alliums and other herbaceous perennials, including Geraniums, Sedums, Panicum, Lespedeza, Calamagrostis, Anemones, Asters, Acanthus, and Agastache, among many others.
The plantings display a variety of plants that are adapted to hot, humid summers and cold, wet winters. The color scheme consists mostly of cool tones and pastels that compliment the granite wall. In summer, the central pool is transformed by the addition of tropical water lilies and other aquatic plants.
The Yew Garden
The Yew Garden is a distinct room created within clipped yew hedges. The plantings are more varied than in the Perennial Garden, with annuals, tropicals, and other tender plants added in season for a mixed border or cottage garden impression. The color scheme includes more bright, bold colors to contrast against the dark background hedge.
The Maple Terrace
Also called the Round Garden, the Maple Terrace best illustrates the idea of interplanting. The curved, raised beds come alive in early spring with a succession of flowering bulbs beginning with Eranthis, Galanthus, and Iris reticulata cultivars, and moving into summer with Triteleia (Brodiaea) ‘Queen Fabiola’. The groundcover of Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, or Blue Leadwort, covers the fading bulb foliage and flowers throughout the summer, finishing the season in scarlet brilliance, complimentary to the ‘Suminagashi’ Japanese maples. The bed encircles an intimate sitting area of benches accented by colorful containers of tropicals and annuals.
The Fragrance Garden
The Fragrance Garden displays plants which posses a fragrance at some time in their yearly growth cycle. The fragrance may reside in the leaves, stems, roots or flowers. Many bulbs and perennials are permanently displayed in the perimeter areas along with fragrant tress, shrubs, vines, and roses. The central beds change seasonally from mass plantings of bulbs and spring flowers to designs for the summer that showcase heat-tolerant fragrant plants including lotus cultivars.
Perennials in the permanent collection include many fragrant members of the mint family, Lamiaceae, the Apiaceae (Umbelliferae), or celery family, Lily family members, as well as cultivars of Dianthus, Geranium, Phlox, Helianthus, Filipendula, Paeonia, Acorus, and others.
Brookside Garden’s Plant Introduction Program
Beginning in 1976, Brookside Gardens sponsored several plant collecting trips to Japan and Korea to bring back plants of potential garden merit. Barry Yinger, a noted plantsman, amassed plant collections to evaluate by gathering plants in the wild and from nurseries. After the last trip in 1982, selected plants from the entire collection were sent out for formal observation by evaluators at approximately 10 test sites throughout North America. Those found to have superior garden merit, to be pest resistant, and to be suited to commercial production have been introduced into the trade.
Although the plant introduction program is completed, many of the plants from the program can be seen in plantings around the Visitors Center and elsewhere at Brookside Gardens. Below is a partial list of plants that Brookside Gardens has introduced.
A partial list of Brookside plant introductions:
- Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Issai’ Purple Beautyberry
- Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’ Variegated Sedge
- Cephalotaxus haringtonia ‘Korean Gold’ Golden Upright Plum-Yew
- Daphne odora ‘Zuiko Nishiki’ Bicolored Winter Daphne
- Euonymus fortunei radicans ‘Harlequin’ Variegated Creeping Euonymus
- Forsythia koreana ‘Ilwang’ Golden Korean Forsythia
- Juniperus conferta ‘Silver Mist’ Shore Juniper
- Juniperus conferta ‘Sunsplash’ Variegated Shore Juniper
- Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki’ Variegated Hollyleaf Osmanthus
- Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Sasaba’ Bambooleaf Hollyleaf Osmanthus
- Pieris japonica ‘Whitewater’ Japanese Pieris
- Schizophragma hydrangeoides ‘Moonlight’ Japanese Hydrangea Vine
- Spiraea japonica ‘Neon Flash’ Japanese Spirea
- Styrax japonicus ‘Carillon’ Weeping Japanese Snowbell
- Styrax japonicus ‘Pink Chimes’ Pink Japanese Snowbell
- Zelkova serrata ‘Green Veil’ Pendant Japanese Zelkova