Since 2005, this educational space has featured eight themed gardens, a pond ecosystem, and a greenhouse designed to connect visitors with local sustainability. Visitors can explore at their own pace to discover seasonal wildlife and learn about urban gardening, pollinators, and environmental stewardship.
Garden Hours:
Monday – Friday
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Garden Hours: Monday – Friday 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM Check our calendar for updates on closures.
Interested in visiting with a group? Contact Suliama Elemam at suliama@greaternewark.org to schedule a guided tour.
Click any garden area to open a detailed view with photos and plant information.
Pollinator Garden
The pollinator garden supports bees, butterflies, and moths by providing nectar-rich plants that sustain pollinators throughout their life cycles. Many of these plants also serve as host plants for caterpillars and nesting habitats for solitary bees.
Woodland Garden
A peaceful collection of trees, shrubs, and shade-loving woodland flowers wraps around the Environmental Center, creating a cool and calming natural habitat. This includes the Nature of Newark Trail and the Wildlife Gallery.
Nelson Mandela Freedom Garden
Inspired by Nelson Mandela's time tending a garden during his imprisonment on Robben Island, this garden celebrates the connection between gardening, resilience, and freedom. Here you'll find vegetables once grown in Mandela's garden alongside flowers native to South Africa, creating a unique global botanical space.
Cistern & Rain Garden
Our 650-gallon rainwater cistern, installed by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Project, captures an estimated 10,000 gallons of rainwater each year. Overflow water is directed into a rain garden that helps manage stormwater and prevent flooding along nearby trails.
Green Roofs
Our green roof installations demonstrate how plants can be grown on rooftops to help reduce urban heat, manage stormwater, and support biodiversity in cities.
Demonstration Garden
The Demonstration Garden is used by the Conservancy's education team to teach vegetable growing techniques, composting, and sustainable gardening practices.
Chicken Coop
Greater Newark Conservancy's Chicken Coop. Remembering Ginger the Chicken.
Pond & Riparian Habitat
The pond ecosystem supports a variety of wildlife including fish, frogs, turtles, and dragonflies.
Surrounded by native moisture-loving plants, this habitat also provides drinking water for birds and small mammals.
Sundial Garden
The plants surrounding our functioning sundial thrive in full sunlight, featuring native grasses and meadow flowers that flourish in open environments.
Sensory Adventure Garden
This interactive garden encourages visitors to experience plants through sight, sound, smell, and touch.
Look for bright colors and unusual shapes, touch textured leaves and stems, and listen to grasses and seedpods move with the wind.
Herb Garden
This garden features a mix of annual and perennial culinary and medicinal herbs, offering a hands-on opportunity to explore how plants are used for cooking, wellness, and traditional remedies.
Green Roofs
Our green roof installations demonstrate how plants can be grown on rooftops to help reduce urban heat, manage stormwater, and support biodiversity in cities.
Woodland Garden
A peaceful collection of trees, shrubs, and shade-loving woodland flowers wraps around the Environmental Center, creating a cool and calming natural habitat. This includes the Nature of Newark Trail and the Wildlife Gallery.
Explore the Themed Gardens at the OLC. Each garden area at the OLC highlights a different aspect of urban agriculture, native plants, sustainability, and environmental education. Visitors can explore these spaces through the interactive map above.
Explore the garden through our Self-Guided Plant ID Tour.
Look for numbered markers throughout the OLC and discover a rotating seasonal selection of plants.
Each marker highlights a unique plant growing in the garden along with information about its characteristics, habitat, and role in the ecosystem.
If you are interested in learning more about any plants in the garden, send a picture to Suliama Elemam at suliama@greaternewark.org for more information.
1. Nodding Onion
(Allium cernuum)
Located by the entrance. This native onion has delicate pink dangling blossoms. It thrives in many different types of soil, provides nectar to bees and is a larval host for several species of moth. The flowers, leaves and bulbs can be used to flavor food.
2. Cup Plant
(Silphium perfoliatum)
Located near the Sundial. This towering plant has cheerful yellow flowers on top of stalks that can grow to nine feet in height. The stems are clasped by large leaves forming little cups that fill with rain providing a water source for birds and insects. The flowers are also a source of pollen, nectar and seeds.
3. Purple Lovegrass
(Eragrostis spectabilis)
Located in the meadow near the Sundial. Purple Lovegrass is a low growing native grass that blooms in a cloudy pinkish-purple haze in mid-Summer. This grass thrives in dry, rocky and disturbed places and can be found growing wild in the sandy soils of the Jersey Shore. It is a larval host plant for several skippers and moths.
4. Purple Coneflower
(Echinacea purpurea)
Located in the Herb Garden. Purple Coneflower is a popular ornamental that is native to the Southeastern and Midwestern United States where it grows wild in open woods, prairies and thickets. The seeds are loved by birds and the flowers provide nectar and pollen to bees including many specialists. A few moth caterpillars also feed on the seedheads. Purple Coneflower has been used medicinally by indigenous people for thousands of years and is commonly taken today as a supplement to support immune health.
5. Anise-Scented Goldenrod
(Solidago odora)
Located in the Sensory “Smell” Garden. Goldenrods are a large genus of flowering plants that are important for the survival of an enormous number of insect species. Their pollen and nectar are a critical source of fuel late in the Summer and through the Fall and they are larval hosts to over 100 species of lepidoptera. The leaves of this Goldenrod smell like anise.
6. Pearly Everlasting
(Anaphalis margaritacae)
Located in the Sensory “Touch” Garden. A low growing plant with cute, fuzzy white flowers, Pearly Everlasting is native to sunny, dry, sandy and rocky soils of the Northeastern United States. Look for American Lady butterflies flying near this plant (or their caterpillars devouring its leaves).
Watch birds visiting the OLC in real time.
Our bird feeder camera provides a live look at the native birds that visit the garden throughout the year, offering a unique opportunity to observe local wildlife up close.
(Section coming soon)
This section will highlight the bees and pollinator habitats supported by the OLC and the important role pollinators play in our ecosystem.
