Explore our gardens

Juniper Level Botanic Garden’s 28-acre campus is filled with more than 27,000 taxa of plants, including native perennials, exotic plants, rare delights, and an array of incredible and unusual specimen trees and shrubs you won’t see anywhere else in the world.

Pushing the limits of horticulture

Diversity is our goal

JLBG’s aim is to be the most unique botanic garden in the world. In the quest for new plants, JLBG has initiated over 80 botanical expeditions and sponsored many more, both domestic and international, since 1994. JLBG also works closely with the top plant explorers and breeders around the world to grow and evaluate the best in new ornamental plants. Few, if any, plant nurseries or botanic gardens can match the diversity of the JLBG plant collections, which currently numbers over 27,000 taxa, many with original provenance data.

JLBG promotes botanical diversity by providing our collection with a nurturing home including proper plant placement, spacing and soil preparation. Plant combinations using color, texture, and form to accent each plant’s best characteristics creates aesthetically pleasing views in the garden during each season of the year. Come explore the magic of Juniper Level Botanic Garden!

Established in 1986

8 acres

Display gardens

27000+

Different plant taxa

1364

Different genera of plants

Unique Garden Design

Each garden is unique in its combination of shade and sun areas and special features such as bogs, rock gardens, waterfalls, creeks, etc. We encourage you to explore every garden to discover the amazing possibilities of gardening in East coast zone 7b. Our plantings are designed to provide interest in every season, focusing on structure, flow, and elevations. Most of our beds follow the principle of “drifts of one” to accommodate our substantial plant collection. As you walk through the gardens you will rarely find mass plantings, with exception of plants that naturally spread.

Founder’s Garden

This is where it all started back in 1986 when Tony and Michelle Avent purchased the 2.2 acre property that is today the Founder’s Garden. Here you will find our most mature trees, hundreds of rare woodland perennials, our original grotto garden, a small rock garden filled with tiny treasures, and more.

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Michelle’s Garden

Michelle’s Garden is named after PDN/JLBG co-founder, Michelle Avent, who passed away in 2012 after a five year battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Here you will find the sunny alpine berms, a Southwest style patio garden, the iconic Mt. Michelle waterfall, the Mystic creek, our innovative rain garden, and much more.

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Souto garden

The Souto Garden is named to honor our late neighbor, Eddy Souto, who previously owned the property. The main purpose of the Souto Garden is to provide a place for large full sun plants. It is also home to a series of 17 interconnected rain garden pits filled with an array of fascinating wetland plants, a large rock bog filled with carnivorous plants, a picnic area near the large oak, dryland berms featuring Acacia trees, salvias, and blooming cacti, and more.

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Souto garden

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Crevice Garden

The 300’ long crevice garden is our redneck take on a gardening style developed in the Czech Republic, where rocks were placed close together, and stacked vertically, to create narrow crevices. Instead of using rocks, we selected recycled concrete and filled the crevices with ultra-draining soil mix. The pH is just over 8.0, so we chose plants that love or tolerate alkaline soils. We focused on plants from dry areas of the Balkans, the Middle East, Mediterranean Europe, South America, South Africa, and the Southwest and Pacific Northwest regions of the US.

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Anita’s Garden

Anita’s Garden is a beautiful display garden that differs from the others by focusing on aesthetic group plantings rather than “drifts of one.” It is a private garden of Tony and Anita Avent that opens it’s gates only once a year for the JLBG endowment fundraiser in summer.

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