Best Secret Gardens In Minneapolis Near Me

4worldlovers: Through short interactive narratives, this ongoing series presents behind the scenes tours of your favorite outdoor sculptures.

Explore more than 60 sculptures from the Walker’s collection on 11 scenic acres in the heart of Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is free, open to the public, and is open from 6 am to 12 midnight every day. Enhance your visit using the free Bloomberg Connects app to learn about the Garden’s history and uncover the meaning behind the sculptures on display.

Download the free Bloomberg Connects app to access multilingual content on the Garden’s history, the sculptures on display, and more.

Visitors to the Garden are encouraged to try our fun self-guided Minneapolis Sculpture Garden tour for all ages.

For more information about public parks and trails, please visit the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board.

Help the Walker maintain and preserve the sculptures you have come to know and love with a 100% tax-deductible gift to the Garden fund today! Give now.

Explore two new works in the Garden: Okciyapi (2021), a commission by Twin Cities–based artist Angela Two Stars; and Adam and Eve (2021) by Simone Fattal.

Since opening in 1988, the Garden has welcomed millions of visitors, showcasing works from the Walker Art Center’s renowned collections of modern and contemporary art in the setting of an urban park. The Garden is a partnership between the Walker and the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, a national award-winning park system.

This parkland has seen many changes over time. A landscape shaped by glaciers more than 10,000 years ago, the area was once an expanse of marshland used as a seasonal camp by Minnesota’s first people, the Dakota and the Ojibwe. In the late 1800s, the site held an armory and parade grounds. In the early 1900s, formal gardens and a series of sports fields were established by the Park Board. When the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opened in 1988, it was one of the first major public/private urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States.

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is home to more than 60 outdoor sculptures. Generations of artists from 10 different countries around the world created these artworks. Many of the works are site-specific and made especially for this public park—from the iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry centerpiece to structures that offer spaces for gathering, conversation, or dreaming. Rediscover the Garden’s art and natural beauty through Minnesota’s ever-changing seasons.

What happens when experts from many fields—architects, curators, designers, artists, landscape architects, gardeners, environmentalists, writers, scientists, and many others—come together with community members to reimagine a beloved public space? The result of this multifaceted partnership is a forward-thinking design for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which was fully reconstructed in 2017. The site features ecologically sustainable water management, a flourishing habitat for plants and wildlife, and creative landscape elements that showcase the artworks in nature. Learn more about how the Garden came to be.

To reconstruct the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden’s north end, the site—formerly a marshland—needed to be considered carefully. Landscape architects worked in partnership with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization to envision ways that this land might be used to better support the art, plants, and wildlife, while also more responsibly managing stormwater as a resource rather than a waste product.

Improving the park’s sustainability, a fresh meadow filled with native plants and engineered soils helps absorb runoff from stormwater, returning the landscape to a more natural state. This environment is interspersed with three “islands” that showcase contemporary sculptures from the Walker Art Center’s collection.

At the center of the park is an underground cistern, or water collection tank, near the Spoonbridge and Cherry. This feature helps to water the garden and nearby ball fields and also keeps more than 4 million gallons of runoff out of the storm sewers each year, thus reducing pollution in the Mississippi River basin.