KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

If Alice in Wonderland and Bill Nye the Science Guy had a baby, that baby would feel right at home in the Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden — scampering through the treetops on the canopy walk, learning about photosynthesis, shooting energy rays at gigantic solar panel flowers, and searching for critters in the woodlands.

Here are some facts to know before you go, provided by Maria Conroy, the vice president of education at the Dallas Arboretum, who had a big hand in the 17-year planning process.

The adventure garden might look lush and green now, but once upon a time it was a bamboo forest. Not many trees survived the aggressive plant’s takeover, so the Arboretum had to transplant hundreds of trees, even massive full-grown ones, into the area. “Some of those we dug up and transplanted from areas we’ve turned into parking lots,” Conroy says.

The waterfall, which you can see at the entrance and from other locations in the garden, isn’t just for looks; it’s also the air-conditioning system for the Exploration Center. “It’s cooled and heated by that waterfall. When the water falls, the air cools it off, and it enters the building and then absorbs the heat in the building and goes back up to the waterfall.”

Make sure to pack a picnic. There is food available for purchase, but you can bring food inside the garden for no extra charge. You wouldn’t know it, but there are giant vaults under the ground. “There’s a lot,” Conroy says. “It’s like a whole other city under the ground. That’s where we capture the rain run-off, and then when we’re in a drought we use the water in those vaults to irrigate the garden.”

The most expensive exhibit is the indoor Exploration Center, particularly because of the $150,000 OmniGlobe. The OmniGlobe is a giant technological sphere that gives visitors an astronaut’s view of Earth. With the click of a button, it can display real-time weather patterns, memorable natural disasters, other planets’ surfaces or just about anything else that’s round.

Each of the exhibits was custom designed, which is why it took so long to research, create and build. “It takes a long time to invent the wheel,” Conroy says. “All of the exhibits were designed and prototyped and built just for us, so you won’t see anything else like it.”