Botanical Gardens Near Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow's only public garden of its own is The Gardens at Central Park, opened in May 2025 with 33,000 square feet of pollinator, herb, prairie, fragrance and rose beds. For a full botanical garden, drive to Tulsa Botanic Garden: 170 acres, $10 for an adult, and tens of thousands of tulips and daffodils in spring.
After that, the choice is mostly about what you want to see in bloom and how far you'll go for it. Only Philbrook ($22), Tulsa Botanic ($10) and Lendonwood Gardens ($5) list an admission price. The sharper difference is the Signature Planting column: three gardens are built around azaleas and rhododendrons, three are tree arboretums, and Woodward Park is the rose garden. All three azalea gardens are out of the Tulsa area, in Muskogee, Grove and McAlester.
Our picks
- Tulips and daffodils: Tulsa Botanic Garden. Tens of thousands of spring bulbs around the Garden Cascade on 170 acres, for $10, though it closes through January and February.
- Roses without a ticket: Woodward Park & Tulsa Garden Center. A terraced municipal rose garden built in the mid-1930s, plus rock gardens and a 1924 conservatory, on 45 free acres in midtown.
- Azaleas in April: Honor Heights Park. 132 acres planted into the region's biggest spring flower display, with an Azalea Festival every April and free entry.
- Formal gardens and an art museum: Philbrook Museum of Art. $22 covers a 1927 villa and its 23 acres of grounds, with formal terraces modeled on Villa Lante; closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
- A day trip to Grand Lake: Lendonwood Gardens. More than 80 varieties of false cypress and about 250 rhododendron varieties on eight acres for $5, with Satsuki Garden a couple of miles away.
At a glance
| Option | Admission | Acres | Setting | Signature Planting | City | Address |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10source | 170source | Botanical gardensource | Seasonal bulbssource | Tulsasource | 3900 Tulsa Botanic Dr, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74127source | |
| $22source | 23source | Museum or historic estatesource | Formal European gardenssource | Tulsasource | 2727 S Rockford Road, Tulsa, OK 74114source | |
| Freesource | 45source | City parksource | Rosessource | Tulsasource | 2435 S Peoria Ave, Tulsa, OK 74114source | |
| Freesource | 132source | City parksource | Azaleas & rhododendronssource | Muskogeesource | 1400 Honor Heights Dr, Muskogee, OK 74401source | |
| Freesource | 32.5source | City parksource | Tree arboretumsource | Bixbysource | 13700 S Memorial Dr, Bixby, OK 74008source | |
| $5source | 8source | Botanical gardensource | Azaleas & rhododendronssource | Grovesource | 1308 W 13th St, Grove, OK 74344source | |
| Freesource | 100source | University campussource | Tree arboretumsource | Stillwatersource | 3300 W 6th Ave, Stillwater, OK 74078source | |
| Freesource | 31source | City parksource | Tree arboretumsource | Bartlesvillesource | 2600 SE Price Rd, Bartlesville, OK 74005source | |
| Freesource | Museum or historic estatesource | Azaleas & rhododendronssource | McAlestersource | 501 N 5th, McAlester, OK 74502source | ||
| Freesource | 0.5source | Japanese gardensource | Grovesource | 2209 S Main St, Grove, OK 74344source | ||
| City parksource | Native & pollinator plantssource | Broken Arrowsource | 1500 S Main St, Broken Arrow, OKsource |
When each garden is at its best
Spring decides much of this list. Tulsa Botanic's tulips and daffodils fill the beds around its Garden Cascade, Honor Heights holds its Azalea Festival in April, Lendonwood's rhododendrons and azaleas peak in April and May, and the Puterbaugh Center's redbuds and azaleas are best in early spring. Satsuki Garden draws photographers in spring when its azaleas and dogwoods bloom.
Outside those weeks, a few places change character. Honor Heights reads more as a large city park after the bloom, though its Papilion butterfly house runs from Mother's Day weekend through September and its Garden of Lights brings crowds at Christmas. Tulsa Botanic shuts entirely in January and February but runs a December lights display.
Hours, closed days and honor boxes
The tightest schedules belong to a museum and a university. Philbrook is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The Botanic Garden at Oklahoma State University is free but open weekdays only, and its Oklahoma Gardening studio area closes on Wednesdays for filming, so a Wednesday visit misses the best part.
The parks are looser. Washington Irving Memorial Park in Bixby opens at 7:30 a.m. and stays open until late at night, Jo Allyn Lowe Park runs 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Satsuki Garden and the Puterbaugh Center can be walked at any hour. Lendonwood is open dawn to dusk year-round, with an honor box for the $5 when the welcome center is closed.
Park acres versus garden acres
The Acres column measures whole grounds, not planting. Honor Heights' 132 acres include five fishable ponds and three walking trails, and Jo Allyn Lowe's 31 are built around a fishing lake. Lendonwood's eight acres are garden all the way through, with eight themed areas, while half-acre Satsuki is realistically a fifteen-minute stop. Philbrook's $22 likewise buys the museum and its grounds together, so it isn't the same purchase as $10 at Tulsa Botanic.
The options in detail
Tulsa Botanic Garden
The biggest garden in the Tulsa area and the one most worth a dedicated trip: 170 donated acres northwest of downtown, with terraced floral beds, a two-acre children's discovery garden, a lotus pool and a nature trail through native prairie. Spring is the showcase, when tens of thousands of tulips and daffodils go in around the Garden Cascade. It is the only garden here that shuts for the winter, closing through January and February, and it runs ticketed evening events in the fall and a lights display in December.
Philbrook Museum of Art
Philbrook is an art museum first, but its 23 acres of grounds are the closest thing in the region to a formal European garden: beds and terraces laid out east of a 1927 oil baron's villa, following Italian, English and French garden ideas and modelled on Villa Lante. General admission of $22 covers the house and the gardens together, the highest price on this list, and the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Guided tours of the villa and gardens are offered and the gardens are ADA-accessible, with a free audio tour.
Woodward Park & Tulsa Garden Center
Forty-five acres of midtown Tulsa that the city bought in 1909 and turned into its public garden, and the place to go for roses: a terraced municipal rose garden built as a WPA project in the mid-1930s, plus rock gardens, an arboretum with a quarter-mile trail and a Victorian-style conservatory from 1924. The Tulsa Garden Center runs a free teaching garden on the grounds, along with classes and plant society meetings, from a historic mansion at the top of the hill. Nothing is ticketed, so it works as a short stop rather than a day out.
Honor Heights Park
The azalea park: 132 acres on Agency Hill that Muskogee bought in 1909 and planted into the region's biggest spring flower display, celebrated with an Azalea Festival every April. Beyond the azaleas there is the Conard Rose Garden, an arboretum, a dogwood collection, a white garden, five fishable ponds and three walking trails, plus the Papilion butterfly house open from Mother's Day weekend through September. Entry is free and it draws crowds again at Christmas for the Garden of Lights. Come in April if you can; outside the bloom it reads more as a large city park than a garden.
Washington Irving Memorial Park & Arboretum
The closest arboretum to Broken Arrow, about fifteen minutes south in Bixby: 32.5 acres of labelled trees with the Laci Dawn Hill Butterfly Garden, an amphitheater built as a replica of Washington Irving's Sunnyside home, a statue of Irving along the wooded trail, and memorials to the Murrah Building bombing and to September 11 that include a steel beam from the World Trade Center. It is free, self-guided and open from 7:30 in the morning until late at night. Expect a walk among trees and memorials rather than flower beds.
Lendonwood Gardens
A nonprofit eight-acre garden near Grand Lake that punches well above its size: one of the largest false cypress collections in the United States at more than 80 varieties, about 250 varieties of rhododendron, and eight themed areas including a Japanese pavilion, an English terrace garden and an American backyard garden, threaded with streams, waterfalls and a koi pond. Rhododendrons and azaleas peak in April and May. Adults pay $5 and the gate is open dawn to dusk year-round, with an honor box inside when the welcome center is closed. It is about an hour and a half northeast of Broken Arrow, so pair it with the lake.
The Botanic Garden at Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma State's teaching garden, going since 1935, spread across a 100-acre site in Stillwater that mixes an arboretum and research plots with the studio gardens where the long-running Oklahoma Gardening television show is filmed. The studio gardens are the part to walk: themed beds for Oklahoma natives, shade perennials, rock and patio gardening, a Japanese garden and a rock-lined water garden, each set up to demonstrate a technique you could copy at home. Over 1,000 species of plants and free to enter, but it is open weekdays only and the Oklahoma Gardening area closes on Wednesdays for filming.
Jo Allyn Lowe Park
A 31-acre Bartlesville city park built around a fishing lake, whose draw is a large arboretum of hundreds of tree and shrub species, many planted in memory of someone, alongside wildflowers and flower beds that change with the seasons. A pioneer log cabin, the G.L. Potteiger cabin, was moved here and restored in the late 1980s. It is free, open from six in the morning to eleven at night, and has an accessible fishing pier, restrooms and picnic shelters. This is a neighborhood park with exceptional trees rather than a destination garden.
The Puterbaugh Center (Garrard Ardeneum)
The least known garden on this list and the one with the best story: the coal magnate J.G. Puterbaugh built his house on the hill above an old rock quarry in McAlester, and in 1990 the grounds opened to the public as the Garrard Ardeneum, a coined word for art, garden and museum. Rock steps drop from the house into quarry trails lined with flowers, and the redbuds and azaleas are at their best in early spring. The gardens are free and reachable at any hour. The building itself now works mainly as a wedding and conference venue, so treat this as a garden walk rather than a museum visit.
Satsuki Garden
A half-acre Japanese garden in Grove, designed by Dr. Leonard Miller, the same person behind Lendonwood Gardens a couple of miles away. It holds the three elements Japanese landscaping is built on, plants, water and stone, arranged around a koi pond, a stone pathway, a bridge and a deck to sit on. It is free, unfenced and open at any hour, and photographers come for it in spring when the azaleas and dogwoods bloom. Realistically a fifteen-minute stop, best combined with Lendonwood on the same trip.
The Gardens at Central Park
The only public garden inside Broken Arrow, opened in May 2025 after roughly fourteen years of campaigning by Keep Broken Arrow Beautiful and built with money from a 2018 city bond. It runs to 33,000 square feet on the west side of Central Park, planted as several linked gardens: pollinator and monarch beds, herbs, prairie, fragrance and roses, with a pergola, an entry plaza and a water feature. Rose rosette disease forced a redesign partway through, away from masses of roses toward smaller groups protected by barrier plants. It is new and small, so the planting has not filled in yet, but for anyone in town it is a five-minute drive.
How we researched this
This started from a statewide list of Oklahoma's botanical gardens and arboretums, trimmed to those within about ninety minutes of Broken Arrow, then widened by three the list misses: Broken Arrow's own garden, too new to appear, Satsuki Garden in Grove, and the Tulsa Garden Center's grounds at Woodward Park. The Oklahoma City gardens, Myriad Botanical Gardens among them, are two hours or more away and stayed off. Tulsa-area green spaces such as The Gathering Place and Oxley Nature Center don't appear, since no source calls them a garden or arboretum, and the Linnaeus Teaching Garden sits inside Woodward Park, so it would have been the same visit twice.
The Gardens at Central Park has no published admission or garden acreage (its size is given only in square feet, and the 28 acres quoted elsewhere is the whole park), the Puterbaugh Center gives no size, and no source says what kind of land Satsuki Garden sits on, so those four cells stay open. Tulsa Botanic's $10 is the general price for the May to November season; its spring exhibit season carries a higher ticket. Azalea peaks last a matter of weeks, so look for a bloom update before setting out for Muskogee or Grove in April.