Garden Tours
Explore inspiring gardens from the comfort of your own home. We’re sharing immersive video and photos from eight community gardens in Wisconsin that were captured at the peak of the summer and autumn seasons. PBS Wisconsin staff used a special 360 degree camera to record these unique and beautiful outdoor spaces. Within each virtual immersive experience, you can walk through the gardens for a touch of spring-like warmth and lots of gardening and landscaping inspiration. Learn more about each of the featured gardens below, and click on the image or title link to take a tour of these inviting spaces.
You can explore the 360 videos in all directions! If you are viewing the experience on a desktop, click and drag your mouse to pan your view point. You can also click the arrows in the upper left corner of the screen to navigate the 360 video. On a tablet or mobile device, drag your finger across the screen to pan left and right and use your fingers to move your view up and down.
King Shade Garden
This hosta and shade perennial glen features a small stream surrounded by flowering shrubs and trees. Boulder-lined paths lead us through a constructed ruin of a spring house.
Vanderperren English Cottage Garden & Meredith B. Rose Cottage
A vibrant mix of ‘old-fashioned’ flower varieties, herbs, and vegetables.
Schneider Family Grand Garden
Featuring the Fischer Family Overlook Arbor which opens to the Billie Kress Amphitheater with a large stage and grassy seating for over 1,500 people.
Green Bay Botanical Garden Aerial Tour
A 360 Video aerial perspective of the gardens during the height of Summer.
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
Olbrich Botanical Gardens features 16 acres of outdoor display gardens showcasing the beauty of Midwest hardy plants in a setting of prairie style architecture. Olbrich’s Thai Pavilion and Garden, the only one in the continental United States, features an innovative tropical garden in the Midwest. The Bolz Conservatory, a sunny 50-foot-high glass pyramid, houses a diverse collection of tropical plants, a rushing waterfall, free-flying birds, and blooming orchids year-round.
Allen Centennial Garden
Allen Centennial Garden is the artful living laboratory and public botanical garden of the Horticulture Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Garden serves as an outdoor classroom for UW-Madison students and the surrounding communities, providing meaningful learning opportunities for visitors of all ages. The 2.5-acre garden features thousands of ornamental plants, including annual flowers, perennials, tropicals and temperannuals, deciduous trees and shrubs, and conifers.
UW-Madison Arboretum
The UW–Madison Arboretum is a teaching and research facility, and the site of historic research in ecological restoration. The 1,260-acre Arboretum features tallgrass prairies, savannas, wetlands and several forest types, as well as flowering trees, shrubs and a world-famous lilac collection.
Botany Garden
The UW–Madison Botany Garden is an important resource for both teaching and research, serving as reference for the different plant families, genera and species represented. It also provides an area for leisure where examples of plants from around the world demonstrate the diversity and beauty of the plant kingdom. The UW-Madison Botany Garden was the first garden in the world to be based on the new Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APGIV) system of molecular classification of plants.
Lakeshore Nature Preserve
The Lakeshore Nature Preserve is a 300-acre outdoor teaching and research laboratory on the UW-Madison campus. The Preserve stretches for more than four miles along the south shore of Lake Mendota protecting woodlands, wetlands, prairie, and savanna. It is home to many species of wildlife, including the Federally Endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, and is recognized as a Wisconsin Important Bird Area.
