Hershey’s Children’s Garden
A Place to Grow

Since its opening in 1999, the Hershey Children’s Garden at Cleveland Botanical Garden has been considered one of the best of the new public children’s gardens that are being built throughout the country. Hershey Children’s Garden: A Place to Grow celebrates the beauty, joy, delight, and horticultural and design excellence found within this special place.

Maureen Heffernan tells the story of how the garden was developed—from initial idea, to guiding philosophy, to its design, development, and opening day. Readers will gain an understanding of this ambitious garden, whose goal was no less than to create a half-acre urban Eden for children. The stunning color photography of Ian Adams, Janet Century, and Sara Guren brings to life this very active garden in all its creative glory and captures children and visitors of all ages interacting and delighting in the garden.

Through the example of the Hershey Children’s Garden, Heffernan shows that children’s gardens across the nation represent a new and exciting type of garden. Not just simple gardening plots, these new million-dollar-plus children’s gardens are a breakthrough gardening concept that appears destined to join such categories as the rose garden, the herb garden, and the Japanese garden. Hershey Children’s Garden documents and celebrates the planting of one such influential garden, the fruit of a remarkable vision in Cleveland.

Maureen Heffernan is the director of public programs at Cleveland Botanical Garden, where she was the lead staff person developing the Hershey Children's Garden. She is the author of Seed Starter, lead author of The Complete Gardener and a contributing writer to Herb Companion Magazine.   More info →