Mill Pond Garden Open Day from 10 AM to 12 PM, Friday, March 22nd, 2024

Mill Pond Botanical Garden celebrates the beauties of early spring with a Garden Open Day on both  Friday, March 22nd, and Sunday, March 24, 2024, from 10 AM to 12 PM, with a horticulturist on duty.  A ticket admits on one day only with the choice of either.  Note that on sunny days the flowers are more open than on cloudy days and Friday may be sunnier than Sunday.

Mill Pond Garden, the Cape region’s only public botanical garden, a gem in the crown of the region, known nationwide and Google-rated five stars, is located at 31401 Melloy Court, Lewes, DE 19958. Tickets are $18 to admit one car with up to six visitors, with tickets available at millpondgarden.com. Cash only is accepted at the gate in lieu of a ticket. The Garden, wheelchair accessible with a pusher, is open rain or shine but may close immediately with the threat of high wind, lightning, or ice.

One ticket admits one car with up to six passengers.  Rain or shine. Close only if high wind, ice, or lightning.  No refunds.

There are lots of special things these open days. The newly completed  Fountain Folly will be shared for the first time, and the newly installed Glade Garden, will debut for public viewing. Since this is the usual time for the return of the Wood Ducks, the most colorful of all ducks, to the nest box on the Garden Pier where visitors may be lucky enough to see them. Frogs, birds, and basking turtles are likely to be seen as well as many of the Eastern Flyway migratory birds who stop here on Red Mill Pond on their way north to breed. The great predators may be seen too, including osprey, great blue heron, green heron, bald eagle, as well as ducks, geese, cormorants, and more.

Visitors will find the garden very fragrant and floriferous in early spring,  scented by Edgeworthia, Pieris, daffodils, Spirea Ohgon, and more. In flower should be Pieris, forsythia, early rhododendrons, blue forget-me-nots, early tulips, crocus, grape hyacinths, large hyacinths, camellias, hellebores, Pulmonaria, iris, squills, snowdrops, ipheion, anemone blanda and many native ephemerals like bloodroot, fairy bells, woodland phlox, and trillium.

The collection of hellebores and camellias, with more than a score of species and cultivars of each are the largest and most varied in the region.  The opportunity to see these wonderful plants established and in full flower helps gardeners find and choose what they might like best for their home gardens.  When gardeners see a plant in a nursery it is seldom very revealing of its whole future look; a preview here is a good idea.

A riot of blooms and colors awaits to delight the senses, set among beautifully landscaped two thousand feet of pathways graced with nine water features, opening to vistas onto Red Mill Pond with its abundant native bird wildlife, basking turtles, set among huge great cathedral column-like native trees, especially the giant oaks and loblolly pines.

Visitors new to the region who garden take advantage of this public garden as a good way to see the varieties of plants that can do well here and to get ideas and correct information, for plant choices and design ideas.  Others enjoy it for photography and its meditative beauty.

Cameras are welcome. The garden is also available for private rental as a venue for weddings, director’s tours, club meetings, photography sessions and others, as described on the website.