Explore the Garden

at The Peel Museum & Botanical Garden

Perennial Garden

This vibrant tapestry of color and texture is created primarily with perennial plants, which regenerate and bloom year after year from their root systems. Perennials play a crucial role in soil health, providing reliable soil cover, improving soil structure, and maintaining symbiotic relationships with soil microorganisms throughout the year.

As you enter the garden, the circular design becomes evident, highlighted by the formal pond and winding path. The pond not only offers a space for aquatic gardening but also serves as a habitat for aquatic life, while the soothing sound of water creates a peaceful retreat, muffling the noise from the road.

Daylily

Tiger Lily

Siberian Iris

Hollyhock

Rose Garden

The Nelle Haden Rose Garden, named after a beloved staff member who dedicated 30 years to the Peel Compton Foundation, features roses and perennials that provide vibrant color throughout the seasons. Inspired by Victorian-era garden structures, the metal arbor supports climbing roses.

Claire Austin Rose

Peach Drift Rose

Floribunda Rose

Herb Garden

The Herb Garden features a mix of medicinal and culinary herbs, edible flowers, fruit trees, and a sundial at its center. Mary Emaline Peel maintained a large vegetable and herb garden on the property, growing many of the same herbs to use on the farm.

This exciting space includes four geometric garden beds, with a sundial at its center, designed to keep accurate time for our latitude of 36 degrees N.

Rosemary

Coneflowers

Lavender

Seckel Pear

Cutting Garden

Victorian estates typically featured cutting gardens, providing women the opportunity to master floral design and create arrangements for the home. Cut flowers, both fresh and dried, were often used in ceremonies. Katherine Peel’s marriage to William Anderson in April 1891 took place in the Parlor, and it’s likely that in-season flowers such as daffodils and violets were part of the celebration. Flowers also had symbolic meanings, known as the “Language of Flowers,” where each flower and its color conveyed a specific message, often used in bouquets to send secret, unspoken messages.

Gladiolus

Daisy

Carnation

Zinnia

Vegetable Garden

The John and Juanita Fryer Vegetable Garden is dedicated to growing heirloom vegetables—open-pollinated plants that rely on natural mechanisms like insects, birds, wind, and humans for pollination. This allows seeds to be harvested, saved, and passed down for future generations.

The horticulture team follows organic and environmentally responsible practices, including crop rotation, cover crops, composting, drip irrigation, beneficial insects, and diverse plantings of herbs and edible flowers. All vegetables harvested from the garden are donated to local food banks, supporting the community while preserving heirloom varieties.

McIntosh Apple Tree

Climbing Peas

Pumpkins

Grapes

Squash

Children’s Memorial Garden

The Phyllis Abrahams Children’s Memorial Garden is a tribute to loved ones who have passed, symbolizing transformation and renewal. Featuring butterfly sculptures and a butterfly bench, each element serves as a memorial to cherished souls. Designed as a haven for pollinators, the garden includes host plants like snapdragons and milkweed to support butterflies, along with bee houses that provide nesting spaces for solitary bees, mimicking their natural habitats in hollow stems and wood crevices.

Butterfly Bush

Hibiscus

Snapdragons

Milkweed

Apple Orchard

The Heritage Apple Orchard offers a glimpse into the rich heritage of early 20th-century apples, a time when Arkansas was a leader in the American apple industry. The Peel family cultivated over 40 acres of apple trees and enjoyed a variety of apple-based foods. Surrounding the Peel Museum, apple orchards once stretched from this very spot to the cemetery across the street. This vast orchard connected the Peel family to Bentonville’s thriving apple industry, which flourished from the 1800s through the 1920s. By 1900, Benton County, Arkansas, had more apple trees than anywhere else in the United States.

Arkansas Black Apple

Fallawater Apple

Ben Davis Apple

Spitzenburg Apple

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