A couple weeks ago we were up in the State College area and visited PSU's "new" arboretum and botanical garden. It is a remarkable and lovely place. I know they've been working on it for quite a while but they've accomplished so much. Here are some of the photos of the garden.
Some images of the main garden.
Next is the Children's Garden - a beautiful interactive space with a "cave", vegetable and fruit trees, and lots of things to do.
There's a very cool kaleidoscope where they add plants (or pinecones or other stuff) and you spin the base as well as your own eye piece. When we were there you could look at plants through the lenses but this photo posted on their facebook page has pine cones in the center. Here are a couple images through the lenses when we were there.
The children's garden also has a bunch of bronze animal statues. In this photo some kind person gave the lucky bronze bunny an apple from the tree.
The pollinator garden and bug houses are also impressive. Some images of those plus some details of the bug houses.
The other highlight was a stone Ridge and Valley Sculpture of the local watershed and the surrounding topography. This alone is worth the trip!
The big stones are the ridges (Nittany mountain in the center, Bald Eagle to the left, Tussey to the right) and the flat area is the valley. The details are great - dotted streams for intermittent sections and even all of the ponds at the local trout hatcheries. Art meets hydrology.
The info sign.
