Living next to MSU: a botanical garden, a Zaha Hadid, and the Dairy Store

The perk of living in East Lansing or next-door Meridian Township isn’t just football Saturdays — it’s having one of America’s most beautiful campuses as your public park. Michigan State’s park-like grounds along the Red Cedar River include the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden, founded in 1873 and the oldest continuously operated university botanical garden in the country, free and open to anyone who wanders in. Down Grand River Avenue, the Broad Art Museum — a startling folded-steel landmark by the late Zaha Hadid, one of only a handful of her American buildings — anchors the contemporary art scene, also free.

And then there’s the institution that outranks them both in local hearts: the MSU Dairy Store, where the university’s own herd supplies ice cream made on campus by dairy-science students. A waffle cone after a riverside walk through Beal’s gardens is the region’s cheapest perfect afternoon. Okemos and Haslett families in Meridian Township treat the campus as their western neighbor — concerts at the Wharton Center, the planetarium, children’s gardens — which is the quiet secret of the Lansing area: a Big Ten university’s worth of amenities, with a small town’s parking.