The Children’s Garden

Unique place for kids aged 2 – 6. Very over priced. Kinda seemed like the kids were playing in grandmas garden. Adult price was $ 10…for what… to watch my kid run around in weeds. Will not be back. Only come if you want to sit & let your kids run free, that was the benefit — I didn’t have to chase them & stand over them, just let them go.

Totally cute little garden place with kids exhibits. It kept our child happy for an hour or two when we were scheduled to do something nearby with another family and they cancelled. There are all kinds of nooks and crannies here. But bring bug spray– there are lots of mosquitoes everywhere and we got bitten up pretty badly. We loved it here, except for that. Nice installations both indoors and out.

If your children are pretty imaginative and have creative minds, this place is a fun little hidden location to take them. I found the place to be over priced for what we experienced. It was a bit run down and didn’t seem well kept. I could see that it would be best utilized as a birthday party location for a 1 – 6 year old.

I’ve been taking my son here since he was 18mo it’s amazing! Super exciting for any age beautiful safe magical garden, totally worth the years membership. If you get a family plan you can bring another adult and three children! A hidden Jewel in Sarasota got to check it out!

Very cute garden for children to run, play make believe and have fun. Good for children that can run around and entertain themselves. Would be a great place to host birthday parties.

I would certainly pay full price and then some for this wonderful, non-​profit children’s dream-​come-​true. My daughter imagines that fairies live under the gleefully painted toadstools. The colorful bamboo forest has a misting fountain that feels refreshing on a hot day. Each time we visit we experience something new and magical. Come for the Thursday morning story time. No need to bring glitter… Miss Robin supplies it for you!

I really want to like this place. It’s great for older kids. For little kids I get very concerned about broken dangerous things they have around. A bench swing has been dangerously broken for three years. They don’t spray for ants, so you have to really watch the sandy climbing structures and play areas. There have been feces in the little play houses. We’ve run into broken furniture & toys that could easily hurt a child, like a very cute chair with one leg only propped in place rather than attached that would immediately collapse when a kid sat on it. There are jagged screws sticking out of the pirate ship entrance where babies crawl. And the costume area is a whole new level of sanitation nightmare — every sane mom I know completely avoids that area. I want to like this place, but kind of resent how vigilant I have to be to keep kids safe there.

Nice Garden for the kids. I wouldnt pay full price but if you can find a Groupon or other discounted deal its worth the trip.

To go back and review every place in Sarasota that I frequented during the seven years I lived there would take a long time. Well, maybe not since as a creature of habit I always went to the same places. The Children’s Garden is one of the World’s greatest hidden gems for children and this is not an exaggeration. When someone first told me about it I figured it was going to be some type of corporatized view of a place kids would like (see many imaginariums and play spots), but I was so wrong.
The Children’s Garden is off a random side street in an industrial part of Sarasota and when you get there you park in an unfinished grass and treed parking lot before you walk to the path leading you into nirvana. You feel like you just walked into an artist’s colony mixed with a self-​made horticultural center with a touch of whimsy*. There is a gift shop and then there are a bunch of little houses with things for kids to do, including a complete house of costumes. Yes, really. Costumes thrown everywhere and you can just mix and match as you like.
If you go under the brush lined maze and through the door you will enter the actual garden portion where there is a shipwrecked pirate ship, a large dragon, a maze of bushes, a tree-​house with a tire swing, a sand area, picnic tables, a pond and any other places to explore. This is a hub to those in the know for birthday parties and kid-​friendly gatherings and in the end, this is the place that kids like to go.
You don’t have to worry if all the things will be broken (see imaginariums) because your children interact with nature and its amenities. If you have patience as a parent, you can easily spend two hours here and sometimes more. If you have kids and live here or are passing through and you don’t know about The Children’s Garden, you can thank me later. They also have a summer camp…
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* I am very sorry for using the word «whimsy,» but it fits.