Western Colorado Botanical Gardens — Attraction in Grand Junction

What a neat place! We were finally able to visit (they used to be closed Mondays, which is my day off, and they're closed Saturdays and Sundays which my girlfriend has off, but she was off for Juneteenth so we decided to see if they were open) and it was definitely worth it!

You enter in and then find the gift shop to buy your way in. Once you're in, you can go to the rainforest area or the butterfly area. We did butterflies first.

The area is small, but it was nice having it to ourselves! There was a small tortoise named Frankie (I think) and he wasn't very active but the big one named Knobby came cruising right to us! There was also a red eared slider turtle named Jessie and a koi pond. The butterflies were flying around, and even feeding! I do recommend dressing lightly as it was very warm inside. I really enjoyed it though.

We went to the rainforest area next, where I stopped to admire more koi and looked down to notice another red eared slider turtle named Luna was between my feet! So be sure in the butterfly area and the rainforest area to watch your step!

From the rainforest area you can go outside. You should probably have some sunscreen, and I think a bottle of water would be good too. We went around 12-1ish (I don't remember exactly when we got there) and by then there weren't a lot of shady spots.

I really liked the cactus garden and then there was a marshy area I really liked too. There were lilypads with HUGE flowers on them and I was very taken with them as I haven't ever seen that in real life before. There were some little fish in there, and then there were some red winged black birds I enjoyed watching.

From the marshy area we went to the Western Heritage area, which had a lot of great information about the Grand Valley and how different industries have come and gone or still remain.

Our next area was a little spot that had some kind of green fruit (I'm not sure what they were other than not ripe) and some grapes!

After that I visited the outskirts of the roses (the sprinklers were going and while that's certainly welcome on a hot day, the water felt so cold to me so I opted to stay dry lol) and then we went back to the gift shop and then on to our next spot.

There is also a children's secret garden and a "castle". In the pictures online, it's hard to see the scale of it, but up close it wasn't as big as I thought so I didn't feel left out as an adult.

I definitely recommend a visit here! It's very chill and such a nice way to spend time with someone or even...

So lately I’ve been doing door dashing and it’s kind of giving me a new respect for the businesses in town I mean really you’re gonna report me for not wearing a mask when you yourself are not wearing a mask Sheldon really liked the botanical gardens probably won’t go back if you’re gonna let your staff do things like that I mean if you’re going to have your staff ordering from a place you need to tell them to respect the people they’re ordering from you know Google maps has a hard time directing people to your place so I was having a hard time finding it not that I don’t know where it’s at but it gives me an address I follow the GPS try to get there it’s got me going in circles so I’m on the phone trying to contact support take my mask off finally find it jump out of the car while I’m on the phone I hand it to you add an arms distance and you’re an arms distance were more than 6 feet apart I’m fully vaccinated with a booster and...

We really enjoyed our visit to the Western Colorado Botanical Gardens. The staff in the gift shop were friendly. We particularly enjoyed the Butterfly Greenhouse which featured tropical plants and had a Koi Pond. In addition to butterflies, they had numerous turtles and a large tortoise as well. The gardens which sit on a 15 acre plot next to the Colorado River featured several specialty gardens including a Japanese Garden, Cactus Garden, Rose Garden, Native plants and a Childrens Garden to name a few. There is a paved walkway which meanders through the gardens with plenty of places to sit. We were able stroll through the garden in a about a half...