Frederik Meijer Gardens: sculpture, butterflies, and a 24-foot horse

The name only tells half the story. Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is both a botanical garden and an outdoor sculpture museum. It opened in April 1995 after 13 years of planning and fundraising by the West Michigan Horticultural Society. Fred and Lena Meijer joined the project in 1990 and backed the idea of putting gardens and sculpture together. Today the grounds cover 158 acres. The organization’s current About page says it welcomes more than 850,000 visitors a year and has received more than 16 million guests since opening.

The park’s easiest landmark to remember is a horse. Nina Akamu’s The American Horse is a 24-foot bronze based on a design Leonardo da Vinci made in the late 1400s but never completed. Fred Meijer commissioned two castings in the late 1990s. One stands here, and the other stands in Milan. Both were unveiled in 1999.

Inside, the five-story Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory covers 15,000 square feet. The organization calls it Michigan’s largest tropical conservatory. Each spring, Butterflies Are Blooming brings in nearly 7,000 tropical butterflies from more than 50 species; the gardens describe it as the country’s largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition. Outside, the grounds include an 8-acre Japanese garden and a 30-acre sculpture park. In other words, this is not a quick greenhouse stop. Give yourself time to walk.