Your walk has brought you to the entrance of Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, one of the most remarkable cultural institutions in the Midwest and a place that has genuinely changed how people think about what a botanical garden can be. Opened in 1995 and named for the founder of the Meijer retail chain — the supercenter format that the Meijer family invented before Walmart made it famous — the gardens span 158 acres of indoor and outdoor spaces that integrate serious horticultural collections with world-class sculpture. The outdoor sculpture park holds monumental works by Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Mark di Suvero, and dozens of other twentieth and twenty-first century artists, displayed along paths through woods, meadows, and formal gardens.
The indoor tropical conservatory, one of the largest in the country, houses a reproduction of a Leonardo da Vinci horse that is itself famous — a casting of the massive bronze that da Vinci never completed in his lifetime. In spring the tulip display reflects Grand Rapids' Dutch heritage; in summer the butterfly migration exhibit draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. This is not a minor regional attraction.
It is a genuinely great institution that happens to be in Michigan.