Brookside Gardens
Formal beds, ponds, woodland planting, and conservatories make a free public display garden within Wheaton Regional Park.
Artwork inspired by Grace Hartigan
Brookside is designed as a sequence of distinct garden experiences rather than a single floral spectacle. Water, clipped hedges, shade, and carefully chosen planting create changes in scale and mood, while the conservatories extend the growing season indoors. Returning in another month can alter the dominant color, texture, and scent of the same path.
The garden also offers practical ideas for smaller spaces: rain gardens, fragrance planting, and combinations of foliage can be studied without trying to reproduce an entire formal bed. Move slowly between a few contrasting areas instead of pursuing every named garden. The surrounding regional park adds recreation, but Brookside’s planted grounds keep their own entrances, visitor practices, and quieter pace.
- Area
- 50 acres
- Parent park
- Wheaton Regional Park
- Indoor growing
- Two conservatories
Quick guide
- Pick contrasts
- Pair a formal garden with woodland or waterside planting.
- Use the path map
- Choose the accessible route before exploring the wider grounds.
Know before you go
- Notice foliage
- Leaf shape can carry a planting long after flowers fade.
- Visit the rain garden
- Look at how planting responds to collected water.
- Try a seasonal return
- The same garden room can read differently in spring and autumn.
- Enter on foot safely
- Use pedestrian gates beside the vehicle entrances.
Good to know
The vehicle entrances contain deer-exclusion grates that are unsafe to cross on foot. Walkers have separate signed entrances nearby.
Notice these
- Pond reflections
- Formal hedge geometry
- Contrasting foliage textures