International Peace Garden

The Turtle Mountains have long been home to the Pembina Chippewa and the Métis, whose Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa hold a reservation just to the west of the garden. This wooded upland, rising green out of the plains, was a gathering and hunting ground long before any survey line was drawn across it, and the tribe remains a living presence in the country around the garden today.

The garden itself grew from a proposal made in the 1920s to the National Association of Gardeners. When the site was chosen here on the forty-ninth parallel, thousands of people came to the dedication in 1932, gathering around a simple stone cairn set on the boundary. Over the decades that followed the grounds filled in with formal beds, an arboretum, and memorials, tended jointly by North Dakota and Manitoba as a shared trust between the two countries.

The heart of the garden is its formal section, where a long reflecting pool and cascade run straight down the international line, flanked by sunken gardens and floral displays that are replanted each season. A floral clock, a bell tower, and a set of tall Peace Towers rise among the beds, and in summer the color here is at its fullest.

Beyond the formal gardens are quieter attractions. The Peace Chapel is a simple limestone building whose interior walls are carved with quotations about peace from across history. Nearby stands a memorial built around steel beams recovered from the World Trade Center, given to the garden after the attacks of September 11, 2001. A large conservatory holds one of the more remarkable cactus and succulent collections on the continent.

The garden sits within the Turtle Mountains, a low forested plateau that stands out sharply from the surrounding prairie. Glaciers left this country dotted with small lakes and studded with aspen, oak, and birch, so the land feels more like the north woods than the open plains just a few miles south.

The setting draws deer, moose, beavers, and a great many birds, and the woods and water make the garden a cool, green retreat in the heat of a plains summer. Trails wind out from the formal grounds into the trees, and the nearby state forest and lakes extend the walking and paddling for anyone who wants more.

Summer is the garden in full bloom, when the formal beds are planted out in tens of thousands of flowers and the fountains run. It is the busiest and most colorful time, with long northern evenings and warm days.

Spring comes late this far north, but the arboretum and the wooded hills leaf out in fresh green, and the first plantings go in. Fall turns the Turtle Mountains gold and rust, a quiet and beautiful time to walk the grounds. Winter closes much of the formal display, though the conservatory stays green and the snow-covered hills draw skiers and snowshoers nearby.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.