(bells ringing) - We are right across the beautiful Red Cedar River from the football stadium, so it's a great place to come before a game and relax.

It's a garden right in the heart of campus, which is really, really unusual for botanical gardens.

And it's been here 154 years, right?

We haven't moved in all that time, so it's pretty spectacular that way.

The garden was established in 1873 by W.J.

Beale.

He was a professor at MSU and he started the garden as an education garden.

Since we started in 1873, that makes us the oldest university botanical garden in the country.

So we've been educating students longer than any other garden in the country.

That's something we really love, right?

Two years later, he started a different garden just adjacent to that garden.

He called that one the botanical garden and that he started as a conservation garden.

So from our very roots, we've been a conservation and education garden, something we still do today.

Over time, the garden has changed a lot.

It was originally a little valley with a creek running through it.

It's been filled, you can see.

- [Narrator] Well, sure, the garden has changed over 150 years, but the reasons folks visit are consistent.

- Typically, visitors come to the garden to learn, but also to connect with nature.

And when they do, there's a lot of interpretation for them to see if they want to learn about plants.

But there's also a lot of well-being stations where people can actually focus on connecting nature and their physical and mental health.

Lots of little things to try.

So you don't have to just, you know, do a meditation.

You could also, for instance, do a stretching exercise or read poetry all centered around nature and well-being.

I am really happy to say that that's one of the top two things people come to the garden program.

So to connect with nature, that well-being aspect, and to learn.

- [Narrator] And there is a lot to connect with and enjoy.

- We have a huge collection of plants, right?

We have over 2,000 species of plants that are documented, that are labeled, that people can learn from.

On almost all of them, there's a little label that says something about the plants, usually related to the purpose of the collection they're in.

We're embarking on a program we call Rewilding the Garden.

So we are turning gardens back to more nature, even though it was before, we're increasing our proportion of native plants.

We are providing ways for people to connect with nature.

We're softening the landscape a little bit to make it a little more natural.

So you'll see all of those things.

But of course, any time of year, there's going to be lots of plants blooming, lots of interesting things to learn about.

Sometimes you can just sit and watch people in the garden.

It's a lovely place just to relax and get away.

In the spring in particular, of course, a lot of our trees are blooming.

I think you can see a dogwood right behind me, for instance, or red buds in the garden.

We have trilliums blooming all over the garden right now.

There's always seasonal color.

Later in the summer, our pollinator garden is always a big hit because it's a riot of color and tons of bees and butterflies floating around pollinating plants.

So that's a real eye-catcher later in the summer.

- [Narrator] You might even find a creative spark for your home garden.

- We do try to inspire people to both plant native plants in their own yards, bring a little nature into their own yards.

Part of what we like to do is explain what you can do for the environment when you're here.

We also, for instance, in our pollinator garden, it's not just a pretty garden.

We actually study it.

We bring in plants that not everybody would grow in the pollinator garden, but that are commercially available.

So if you wanted to, you can find them at like a local native plant nursery.

- [Narrator] For Alan, there's no such thing as an all-time favorite garden spot.

However, my favorite today is actually Sleepy Hollow.

So Sleepy Hollow is part of the garden that is just across the road from the rest of the garden.

It's adjacent to Beaumont Tower, that iconic place on MSU's campus.

And it's probably the most natural place in our garden.

There are not very many labels there.

It's a place where we're constantly putting new native plants there.

It's almost entirely native plants.

It has some of the biggest trees in the garden.

And it's just adjacent to West Circle Drive.

So people who've been to campus know that place on campus.

It's just like a park full of 400-year-old trees.

So Sleepy Hollow is part of that.

So it's really a special place.

It really is one of my favorite places in the garden.

We do remind people of the importance of nature.

We do show people that you can change the world a little bit by maybe making your yard a little more natural.

You know, volunteering in a nature area around you.

I think that that's really important.

Also, our garden is a place of history.

154 years old now, touching that legacy on this campus that is so old.

You know, being connected with those roots of the University of Michigan, I think is really important.

And then I would also say that you can really connect with natural heritage of Michigan here, right?

You can do that in a forest anywhere probably.

But you're not going to have the opportunity to learn about it like you can learn about it here when you visit the garden.