The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden

The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden — 66 designed acres above White Rock Lake

Start with an honest correction: this is not a public park. The Arboretum sits on land owned by the City of Dallas, but it is operated by the non-profit Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society, it charges admission, it charges separately for parking, and it locks the gates at five in the afternoon. What you get in exchange is 66 acres of relentlessly replanted horticulture on the southeastern shore of White Rock Lake, organized around two surviving estate houses from the late 1930s, with the downtown skyline sitting across the open water like a backdrop someone commissioned. Architectural Digest once ranked it second on a list of the fifteen most breathtaking botanical gardens on the planet, ahead of Kirstenbosch in Cape Town and just behind the gardens at Versailles. Dallas has been quietly pleased about that ever since.

Highlights

• The DeGolyer House — a 21,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival mansion completed in 1939 for the geophysicist Everette Lee DeGolyer, designed by Denman Scott and Burton Schutt, with thirteen rooms and a library of roughly 1,750 square feet; it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and still anchors the garden’s lakeside terrace.
• The Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden — eight acres, seventeen interactive galleries and roughly 150 hands-on exhibits, opened on 21 September 2013; the themes run from plant biology to weather, energy and the physics of water, and the whole thing was built as a science campus rather than a playground.
• The Nancy Rutchik Red Maple Rill — two acres of shaded ravine planted with more than eighty cultivars of Japanese maple, cut through by a stream; it is the coolest corner of the property in August and the most photographed in late November.
• The Trial Gardens — between 3,000 and 5,000 plants are tested here every year, submitted by over 150 breeding companies worldwide, because North Texas summers are one of the cruelest proving grounds in the country and a variety that survives here will survive almost anywhere.
• A Tasteful Place — a three-and-a-half-acre edible garden overlooking the lake, opened on 3 October 2017 at a cost of around twelve million dollars, designed by SWA Group with Buchanan Architecture and the garden designer P. Allen Smith as consultant; it holds an orchard, ornamental vegetable beds, herbs and a working teaching kitchen.
• The Margaret Elisabeth Jonsson Color Garden — six and a half acres that are stripped and completely replanted with each seasonal display, which is why the same path can be a tulip field in March and a chrysanthemum field in October.

What’s inside

Nineteen named gardens are threaded together by the Lyda Bunker Hunt Paseo de Flores, the central spine that everybody simply calls the Paseo. From it you reach the shaded pockets, the open display beds, the two historic houses and the lake overlooks. The topography does real work here: the site falls toward the water, so views open and close as you walk, and the shaded ravines sit low while the flower beds sit high in full sun.

• The Eugenia Leftwich Palmer Fern Dell and the McCasland Sunken Garden, both built into the slope, both deeply shaded, both several degrees cooler than the open lawns.
• A Woman’s Garden, the project of the Women’s Council of the Dallas Arboretum, designed by the landscape architect Morgan Wheelock and carried out locally by Warren Johnson — phase one opened in September 1997, phase two in March 2006.
• The Martha Brooks Camellia Garden, with roughly two hundred camellias that do their flowering in the dead of winter, and the Rose Mary Haggar Rose Garden with more than two hundred hybrid teas.
• The Crape Myrtle Allee, opened in 1994 and paved in Pennsylvania bluestone, running from the Paseo down to Toad Corners; its trees replaced the original crape myrtles planted by the DeGolyers themselves.
• The Alex Camp House, finished in 1938 on a neighboring 22-acre property that the Arboretum acquired in 1980 — 8,500 square feet mixing Spanish Colonial, English Regency and Art Deco detailing.
• The Pecan Grove, the Lay Family Garden, the Boswell Family Garden, the Fogelson Fountain donated by the actress Greer Garson, and the Martin Rutchik Concert Stage that hosts the summer and fall concert seasons.

What to do and who it’s for

• Serious gardeners — the Trial Gardens are effectively a public laboratory for heat-tolerant plants, and the labels tell you exactly which cultivar survived the last Texas summer.
• Families with young children — the Children’s Adventure Garden can absorb an entire morning on its own; the exhibits are built to be climbed on, pumped, poured and pedaled, not read about.
• Photographers — the lakeside lawn gives an unobstructed skyline shot across open water, and the seasonal displays are staged specifically to be photographed.
• Couples and older visitors — the shaded ravines, the tea service at the DeGolyer House and the tram loop make it possible to see the property without walking the whole of it.
• Concertgoers — the Cool Thursdays Concert Series has been running for nearly three decades, playing on the lawn with the lake and the skyline behind the stage.
• School and homeschool groups — field trips, after-school sessions and summer camps run year-round out of the education program.

Getting there and practicalities

The Arboretum is in East Dallas, on the southeastern shore of White Rock Lake, a short drive from the Lakewood neighborhood and roughly five miles from downtown. There is no rail stop at the gate: the nearest DART rail is White Rock Station on the Blue Line, several miles to the north, so almost everyone arrives by car or by DART bus, which does serve the entrance. Parking is on site and paid; admission is paid and is priced differently on weekdays and weekends. The garden is open daily from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, and solar-powered trams — donated in 2012 by Green Mountain Energy — run tours at ten, noon, two and four. Complimentary wheelchairs are available first-come, first-served, mobility scooters can be rented, and sensory backpacks are kept at the information booths. Allow three to four hours for a normal visit and a full day during a festival. Shade is unevenly distributed and this matters more than anything else from June to September: the fern dell, the maple rill, the sunken garden and the pecan grove are genuinely cool, while the color garden, the edible garden and the lakeside lawns are unbroken sun. In July and August the practical strategy is to be at the gate at nine, do the open displays first and retreat downhill into the shade by eleven. Picnicking is allowed in designated spots, and there is a restaurant and a tea room in the DeGolyer House.

When to visit

Spring is the reason most people come. Dallas Blooms is the largest annual floral festival in the Southwest, built on more than 500,000 spring-flowering bulbs and backed by over a hundred Japanese cherry trees in the pecan grove; it runs from late February through early April and the azaleas overlap with it. Summer turns the open beds into a heat trap by eleven in the morning, and the Arboretum leans into evenings instead — the concert lawn fills at sunset while the daytime crowd thins to the shaded ravines. Autumn is the second peak: the Pumpkin Village is assembled from more than 100,000 pumpkins, gourds and squash, and the Japanese maples in the Red Maple Rill hold their color unusually late, often into December, because North Texas autumn arrives on its own schedule. Winter is the connoisseur’s season — the camellias flower from December through February when nothing else does, the crowds vanish, and the twelve glass-and-aluminum gazebos of the Christmas exhibition stand lit against a bare garden.

Worth knowing

The property began as Rancho Encinal, a 44-acre estate and working dairy farm built by Everette Lee DeGolyer, the geophysicist who helped invent modern seismic oil exploration, and his wife Nell. The City of Dallas Park and Recreation Department bought the estate, and in 1984 the newly formed Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society took over operating it; the neighboring Alex Camp House and its 22 acres had already been acquired in 1980. The garden opened to the public in 1984 with a fraction of today’s planting and grew by donation, one named garden at a time — which is why nearly every feature carries a family name. Two later decisions changed its character. The Chihuly glass exhibition of 2012 required a permanent outdoor lighting infrastructure to be installed across the garden, and once that lighting existed the institution could commission The 12 Days of Christmas: twelve gazebos, each about 25 feet tall, encased in glass, built from roughly 25,963 pounds of aluminum, with sets and costumes executed by designers from the Dallas Opera and Dallas Stage Scenery. The second was the Children’s Adventure Garden of 2013, a project in the sixty-million-dollar range that turned a display garden into a science-education institution. By 2016 annual attendance had passed one million.

Visitor tips

• Buy timed entry in advance during Dallas Blooms and Autumn at the Arboretum — the parking area is the bottleneck, not the garden, and it fills first on weekend mornings.
• Take the tram loop first if the temperature is above 95°F. It gives you the whole layout in half an hour, after which you can walk only the parts you actually want.
• The Children’s Adventure Garden is a separate world at the far end of the property; budget it as its own visit rather than as a stop on the way out, or you will be dragging tired children the length of the Paseo.

Questions and answers

Is the Dallas Arboretum free? No. It charges admission, and parking is billed separately from admission. Members enter and park at no charge, and the garden participates in the Museums for All program, which gives a heavily reduced rate to visitors presenting an EBT card.

How big is it and how long does a visit take? Sixty-six acres with nineteen named gardens. Three to four hours covers the main circuit at a comfortable pace; a festival day or a visit that includes the Children’s Adventure Garden easily runs to a full day.

What is actually blooming when? Late February to early April, tulips, daffodils, azaleas and Japanese cherries during Dallas Blooms. May and June, roses and perennials. September through early November, chrysanthemums and the pumpkin displays. Late November into December, Japanese maple color. December through February, camellias.

Can I get there without a car? Yes, but not by rail. A DART bus route stops at the entrance; the nearest light-rail station, White Rock Station on the Blue Line, is several miles away and would still leave you a bus or rideshare connection.

Is it worth it in the middle of summer? Only if you plan around the heat. Arrive at opening, walk the open displays before eleven, then spend the rest of the visit in the fern dell, the sunken garden and the maple rill. The evening concert series is a much better summer proposition than a midday visit.

Is it accessible for wheelchairs and strollers? Largely yes. The Paseo and the main paths are paved and gently graded, wheelchairs are lent free of charge on a first-come basis, mobility scooters can be rented, and the trams are wheelchair accessible. Some of the ravine gardens involve steps and steeper grades.

What is the difference between the Arboretum and White Rock Lake Park? They are neighbors and are often confused. White Rock Lake Park is free, open city parkland wrapping the whole lake with a loop trail. The Arboretum is a gated, ticketed botanical garden occupying 66 acres of the lake’s southeastern shore.

Can children run around freely? In the Children’s Adventure Garden, which is designed for exactly that, yes. In the display gardens the beds are the collection, and staff will ask you to keep off them.