Take a Walk Through Bartram's Garden || Philadelphia, PA

You’ll find Bartram’s Garden situated along the the Schuylkill River in southwest Philadelphia. It wasn’t as big as I expected based on the acreage and Google Maps. It was a nice park, but if I’m being honest I was a bit underwhelmed based on how many sites recommended it being a must-visit. There weren’t as many actual garden spaces as I thought there would be! We walk a little fast, so it only took us about an hour to wander through. With all that being said, its still not a bad stop if you’re in the area and looking to kill an hour.

Fun Fact: this 50-acre public park is the home of America’s oldest surviving botanical garden!

Activities

Bartram’s Garden has a dock and community boathouse on site, where you can boat and fish. Saturdays during the warmer months are pretty popular, thanks to free public boating from 10am – 2pm. This includes both kayaks and rowboats. There was a line at least 100 people long when we walked by around 11:30am – so it is pretty popular. You can bring your own boats to launch from the public dock as well. If you’re looking to fish instead, they even have a bait & tackle vending machine by the Welcome Center.

If you aren’t a fan of the water or boats (or just long lines), there are plenty of walking and bike trails as well. They even had a stand with people offering bike riding lessons! The trails have a mix of surfaces depending on your preference: dirt, paved, or wooden walkways.

For those of you with a green thumb (or people like me that are trying to get better at keeping plants alive), they have plants for sale at the Welcome Center. If it wasn’t for Jasper being the voice of reason I probably would have brought a bunch of plants home. I really wanted a blueberry bush and some kind of little tree, but we held off on buying anything since we’d recently had sod laid in the backyard to replace the above-ground pool. Need to focus on keeping our grass alive first!

Closeup of plants for sale at Bartrams Garden

Community Garden

The Sankofa Community Garden takes up a little over 3 acres in Bartram’s Garden, and is one of hundreds of community gardens you’ll find scattered throughout the city of Philadelphia. They have an orchard, community garden and crop fields, and they host a farmers market from June – November. You can find more information on the farm here.

Event Space

There are quite a few spaces throughout the garden that you can reserve for free – whether its for picnics, baby showers, or family reunions (50 people max). They also have the Eastwick Pavilion and Love Park patio which can host weddings/large events of up to 350 people.