Some Woman's Journal: [AoM] Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and Apple House

Run by the University of Minnesota, the Landscape Arboretum features a lot of plants. Trees, shrubbery, roses, mums, and bulbs. And a bunch of other stuff, too.

The first thing we did was to take the 3-mile drive around the grounds. The drive takes you through the many varieties of trees and around a few gardens.

In addition to the drive, they have many nature paths, again with the trees and gardens, and sometimes chipmunks. The weather was just about perfect for a nature walk. We walked past the mum garden, which was the last garden to bloom and was in the process of dying out when we went. They have a lot of mums. They have a lot of everything, really. The Arboretum would be a very nice place to go in the spring or early summer when there are actually blooming plants.

You can hold weddings at the Arboretum, but I don't know if they'll let you do it Kazakh-style. You may want to call ahead about that.

We went to the Apple House afterwards, which is affiliated with the Arboretum, but free to enter. Apple Season is pretty much over now, so they only had a few varieties of apples. (By the way, Janeowit tried a Honeycrisp and admits that they are like one of those bands that you have to like even though everybody else likes them and they play their songs on the radio.) We bought some Cortland apples, because they're pretty good for eating. I may make apple sauce with mine.

Regular Admission: $7
Overall Grade: B+
Re-visit?: High revisit value, but not necessarily for full admission price.

I've been thinking... about trees

[janeowit]

I was talking about the MLA and the more I explained it, the more I wanted to go back. I also think I made up a pretty good analogy of what an arboretum is, for people, like me, who didn't really know what to expect. An arboretum is like a zoo for trees. There is a little display of all these exotic living things that you just look at, because you can't interact with them, and then just keep moving on.

I am already thinking about going back for hiking again, I miss that. Back in my park days I would do it al

Re:

[Some Woman]

The arboretum is one of those places that I think either requires a membership or not going at all. $7 per visit is pretty steep, but if you had a membership, you could go there all the time and actually have a chance to appreciate all of the plants at their various stages.

Re:

[Some Woman]

Oh, wow. A membership is only $35! Or $55 for a 2-person membership!

Re:

[janeowit]

I thought that seemed really affordable. Seven times. I think I would go seven times in a year.

It just is so far away in Chaskahassen.

Re:

[Some Woman]

I really expected the membership to be closer to $100.

Stupid Chanhaska.

Been there, done that

[Ethelred Unraed]

...though unfortunately I wasn't there with BoE, who's the real plant freak in the family (she breeds roses, for example). I also went to Seed Savers [seedsavers.org] in Iowa and grabbed some stuff for her on the same trip (August 2003).

As it happens someone's big fat Edina wedding was going on, and I wished I had brought along a barf bag as a result. So many poseurs in so little space. *shudder*

Cheers,

Ethelred