Birmingham Botanical Gardens — Attraction in Birmingham

The Birmingham Botanical Garden was very lovely and well-maintained. You can tell they actually put a lot of care and effort into keeping the garden looking nice for visitors. Be aware that the cafe and the conservatory are not open on Mondays, and they also have restrictions on photographers. They don't want people doing photoshoots there. They only allow handheld cameras according to their sign. A list of rules is posted at the entrance to the garden. They do have a restroom open at all times that the garden is open though, with a changing table in both the men's room and the women's room. The bathrooms are kept fairly clean and stocked with the necessary items. Their drinking fountain by the bathroom is out if order right now as of this post, however, they do have vending machines not far from the entrance, just inside the garden. You can get water, soda, or Powerade from them for about 2 dollars each. The garden has lots of flower beds, an entire rose garden within the garden, different types of trees, fountains, statues, arches, and other structures, metal "porch" swings, and walking paths all around. There is also a Japanese garden but I can't comment on it because we didn't have time to visit it. If its like the rest of the garden though, its worth looking at. Also, they have a sign with a map of the garden, and it includes a QR code to a "treasure map" for older kids, so you and your child can enjoy looking for various "treasures" scattered throughout the garden. Such as the moon tree for example, which is the very sapling that flew aboard the Apollo 14 space mission. Very impressive it is now planted right here in the Birmingham Botanical Garden. Anyway one last thing to note, if you walk all the way straight through from the entrance to the back of the park, you will exit out of a metal black gate and when looking in front of you, you can see the entrance to the Birmingham Zoo just across the street. It's really nice that the Garden is so closely located to the zoo, for anyone interested in doing both...

Attended the Sakura Cherry Blossom Festival yesterday and was incredibly disappointed. First, the parking situation was insane. There must have been thousands of people attending and the Botanical Gardens parking lot had space for maybe a couple hundred cars? People started parking all along the sides of the two-lane entry road, in people’s driveways, filled the parking lots of nearby restaurants and stores, etc. It took almost an hour for us to find a place to park in the city zoo’s overflow parking area, along with the hundreds of other people that were parked there for the Festival. We stopped by the bathrooms first, where there were only four stalls for women and two of them had no toilet paper. There were dozens of women lined up to use the two working stalls. When we did finally make it to the Festival it was such a letdown. There were only about ten small booths for all these people to visit, so each booth was swarmed with people. If you wanted to see what the booth actually had, you had to stand in line for a very long time. Often, when we finally made it to the booth, it was something that didn’t interest us at all: a manga trivia booth, two kids craft booths, etc. There was only ONE food booth that was in no way prepared to feed all these people. Both times I stopped by, they had ran out of food again and were waiting for another delivery. There was also nowhere to buy water. I walked back to the front of the park to buy some from the soda vending machines only to find they were both out of order. After a couple of hours we left tired, hot, hungry, and very thirsty. If the city is going to continue hosting this event, I would highly suggest extending the Festival to last multiple days so thousands of people aren’t trying to attend in the limited window on Saturday. There also needs to be many more booths, including food booths, and easy access to water. Will not be...

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens only occupies 67.5 acres, but it feels much more expansive. Fully wheelchair accessible, this is one of the Magic City's must-see destinations, a true Alabama treasure. The best part is that this municipal park is free! The massive Conservatory alone is worth the visit if one doesn't experience anything else, but the fern garden surrounded by steep rock "wall" expanses; trails with rustic wooden bridges spanning the cold, bubbling creek; and large, looming, luxurious trees of the dark forest remind me of areas along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Great Smokey Mountains. The mountain is iron. It is ancient, and it is the reason d'etre for the city's existence. Throughout the park are found iron ore boulders & outcroppings. These are purple-red with a slight metallic sheen. This is after all Red Mountain, which is THE defining geological feature of Jefferson County. The Japanese Gardens are authentic & contemplative. Birmingham's fairly substantial Asian population frequents here year-round. There are many places to explore at the BBG, and the large main building holds meeting rooms, an auditorium, a café, a gift shop, and a well-stocked, substantial library 100% dedicated to horticulture. The library is a part of the Jefferson County Library Cooperative, which has 40 locations. The Birmingham Botanical Gardens is a great resource for inspiration & upliftment. Go alone... go with a friend... go with your family, but just go. It never...