Travels with Amy: Getting the Best Out of Your Reciprocal Admissions Member Benefit

The spring issue of our newslet­ter pro­filed Arbore­tum mem­ber Amy Howan­sky, land­scape design­er and pro­pri­etor of Back­yard Solu­tions. She empha­sized the val­ue of Lan­dis’ Rec­i­p­ro­cal Admis­sions mem­ber ben­e­fit, avail­able to our mem­bers through the Amer­i­can Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Soci­ety (AHS). Amy’s trips have tak­en her from San­ta Fe to Nashville, Den­ver to the Cay­man Islands, and Flori­da to Hawaii. 

Just a few high­lights from her travels:

The Den­ver Botan­ic Gar­den in Col­orado pro­vides free park­ing and rec­i­p­ro­cal admis­sion for Lan­dis mem­bers. The York Street, Den­ver loca­tion con­sists of 24 acres that include enchant­i­ng water fea­tures and out­door ​“gar­den rooms” devel­oped around themes. Chat­field Farms is a 700-acre native plant refuge and work­ing farm locat­ed along the banks of Deer Creek in Lit­tle­ton, CO. Facil­i­ties include the Earl J. Sin­na­mon Vis­i­tor Cen­ter, the his­tor­i­cal Hilde­brand Ranch, a restored 1918 dairy barn and silo, the 1874 Deer Creek School­house, nature trails, a children’s play area and numer­ous wild­flower gar­dens. The area is known for excep­tion­al birding.

The Marie Sel­by Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in Sara­so­ta, FL also pro­vides free park­ing and rec­i­p­ro­cal admis­sion. A trop­i­cal urban oasis fea­tur­ing unpar­al­leled hor­ti­cul­ture dis­plays and a Sara­so­ta bay-front set­ting, Marie Sel­by Botan­i­cal Gar­dens is a liv­ing muse­um and world-class cen­ter for edu­ca­tion, research and con­ser­va­tion. It also fre­quent­ly fea­tures art instal­la­tions, as well as a music series and spe­cial performances.

The Queen Eliz­a­beth II Botan­ic Park is on the north side of Grand Cay­man in the Cay­man Islands. Free park­ing and admis­sions allow access to a tra­di­tion­al Cay­man Island gar­den burst­ing with the gor­geous col­ors and flo­ral archi­tec­tures so dif­fer­ent from native flo­ra found here — not to men­tion the many blue igua­nas that roam the park!

Na ​‘Āina Kai (“Lands by the Sea”) Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, Sculp­ture Park and Hard­wood Plan­ta­tion is on the Island of Kauai, Hawaii. This gar­den is acces­si­ble only with trained guides — an excel­lent idea, as many of the plants are tox­ic to the touch! The guides are very knowl­edge­able and pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into the native flo­ra. As with oth­er trop­i­cal gar­dens, the col­ors are super-sat­u­rat­ed and quite amaz­ing com­pared to the more sub­tle hues of our local beauties.

Amy made a few sug­ges­tions for trav­el­ing to oth­er gar­dens that are part of the AHS Rec­i­p­ro­cal Admis­sions Program:

• Check the AHS web­site at ahs​gar​den​ing​.org/​g​a​r​d​e​n​i​n​g​-​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​/​r​a​p​/​f​i​n​d​/​s​t​a​t​e​b​y​state before you plan your next vaca­tion. You’ll be sur­prised how many oppor­tu­ni­ties there may be along your route.
• Call or email the gar­den or arbore­tum in advance to con­firm their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­gram. It’s also good to ascer­tain open hours and to find out if there are any spe­cial pro­grams for which you may be inter­est­ed in pay­ing a sep­a­rate fee.
• ALWAYS car­ry your Lan­dis mem­ber­ship card with you. Because Lan­dis is a small lit­tle-known arbore­tum, print the Rec­i­p­ro­cal Admis­sions list­ing from the AHS web­site (or be pre­pared to pull it up on your smart phone) to con­firm Lan­dis’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the program.

We wish you good trav­els. Send us pho­tos from your trips!