Wichita Botanica gardens
— the part of the prairie that learned to bloom on cue.
Not only on a wall.
Wichita Botanica gardens, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Botanica sits on the west bank of the Little Arkansas, just north of where it meets the Big Arkansas at Riverside. Eighteen themed gardens cover a little over seventeen acres — the Downing Children's Garden, the Sally Stone Sensory Garden, the Chinese Garden of Friendship, a Monet-inspired water garden. Late May runs heavy with iris and old-garden roses; July belongs to the prairie plot. The grounds opened in 1987 on the site of an old city greenhouse, and have grown garden by garden since. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Botanica, The Wichita Gardens occupies just over seventeen acres at 701 N. Amidon, on the west bank of the Little Arkansas River north of downtown Wichita. The garden opened to the public in 1987 on the grounds of a former city greenhouse complex, and has expanded steadily into more than two dozen themed garden rooms. Notable spaces include the 1.8-acre Downing Children's Garden (added 2011), the Sally Stone Sensory Garden, the Chinese Garden of Friendship marking Wichita's sister-city relationship with Kaifeng, and a water garden modeled on Monet's at Giverny.
The garden runs three peak periods. Late April through May belongs to the tulip and iris plantings and the early roses; summer brings the perennial borders, the daylily collection, and the warm-season prairie plot through July and August. Autumn turns the children's garden maples copper and red. In December the grounds host Illuminations, a holiday light installation with more than two million bulbs that runs through early January. The garden is closed mid-January through February for winter maintenance.
Botanica is open Tuesday through Sunday from March through December, with seasonal hours; check the official site before going. The address is 701 N. Amidon Street, a five-minute drive north of downtown Wichita and walking distance from the Old Cowtown Museum across Sim Park. Parking is on-site and free. The garden sits at the southern edge of the Riverside neighborhood, with the Mid-America All-Indian Museum and the Keeper of the Plains sculpture less than a mile downstream at the river confluence.
