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The Taltree Arboretum & Gardens Railway Garden is a 2.5-acre outdoor G (Garden)-scale model railway garden that engages visitors of all ages in an environment where families with children, school groups and adults can explore, discover, play, and learn about natural history and horticulture. The Taltree Railway Garden tells amazing stories of American railroads in the context of a large display garden. Railway Lines include: Canyon, Mining, Mountain, Prairie, Steam Passenger, Steel Mills, and the South Shore Line.
The Depot
Visitors to Taltree’s Railway Garden, set to open in spring 2011, will enter and exit the garden through a 1920s-era railroad depot with vintage-style benches and panoramic views of the garden.
 
Train tunnel into depot train staging area Canyons create massive scale
Curving walls eventually will lead guests along paths through the railway garden.
Children Welcome!
The Railway Garden is a safe place where children are welcome to have fun in beginning to develop lifelong habits of nature enjoyment, observation, learning and preservation of green space. Visitors are treated to a surprising new view of American history from the railroad perspective. The garden railway displays plants, water features, hardscape, and an outdoor G (Garden)-scale model railroad brought together as an esthetically balanced moving sculpture.
Plants
Plant selection for the Railway Garden's design will combine a large variety of full-sized and dwarf plants suitable for the local climate and soil type. Several integrated railway loops will course through the garden’s vignettes of built-to-scale villages, industrial areas, buildings and countryside. Vignettes include: Building the Railroad, Changing Land and People, Civil War, Depot, Diesel Highways Interurban, Harvesting Natural Resources, Life Transformed, Lincoln's Railroad, Railroads Now and Future, and the Activity Shelter.
The Railway Garden will be built in three phases. Phase One is the largest and encompasses the steam era of railroading in America.
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