Calder Gardens Brings Stillness to Philadelphia’s Parkway

A Living Landscape of Complexity and Calm

At Calder Gardens, these ideas present across seven distinct areas: the west woodland garden, east and west perennial meadows, prairie matrix, robust border, circle entrance garden, and vestige and sunken gardens. More than 37,000 plants across over 250 varietals were planted this year. They are currently finding their footing, but are expected to fully take shape in the coming years. “This is one of my most complex gardens,” Oudolf says.

The space is intended as a respite from the chaos of this time. As Calder Foundation President Sandy Rower puts it, if he had his way, the museum and gardens would be phone-free zone. “This is a place where your nervous system will be able to calm a little bit,” he says. “You can’t understand Calder’s work from your intellect—you understand it from your body. It’s a very physical thing and this place being a quiet sanctuary is essential to that.”

Main access with gardens designed by Piet Oudolf’s reveling the sunken courtyards of the exhibition spaces. Calder Gardens, 2025. Photograph by lwan Baan. Artwork by Alexander Calder © 2025 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The gardens themselves act as an offering to the city and are part of the museum’s wider mission to create a cultural space that feels accessible, unpretentious, and non-judgemental. Visitors, Philadelphians, and the area’s more than 70,000 residents are now able to meander and sit freely in the gardens during opening hours, and are encouraged to return again and again to watch the garden transform with the seasons and to reconnect with a sense of impermanence and ephemerality.