Ellsworth Rock Gardens

This isn’t a flat, manicured garden stroll. Visitors describe climbing over uneven bedrock and between the terraces, and the rock can be slick when wet. Wear shoes with grip and leave time to explore at your own pace. The garden paths have no verified accessible route, so don’t assume they’re step-free.

A picnic shelter with a stone fireplace and table stands where the Ellsworth summer home used to be. Bring food and drinking water; the site is set up for a picnic. Restrooms are seasonal, so don’t count on them being available year-round. If you’re taking a park boat tour, check its current schedule separately and make sure the stop gives you enough time to climb around.

Chicago carpenter and self-taught artist Jack Ellsworth spent roughly 20 summers shaping the outcrop into a garden. He terraced the granite and worked with the site’s natural materials, turning boulders into abstract sculptures. The original garden had 62 terraces, more than 13,000 lilies, and over 200 rock sculptures; some plantings and many of the stone works remain.

The sculptures range from carefully balanced stones to larger abstract forms built into the granite. Their modernist forms can bring Isamu Noguchi or Constantin Brancusi to mind. They’re easy to mistake for natural rock piles at first, so slow down and look for the deliberate shapes and joins.

The outcrop opens onto Kabetogama Lake, with stonework and remnant garden beds across the slope. For a photo, put a sculpture or terrace in the foreground and the lake beyond it; a straight shot of the rocks can lose the scale of the place. The picnic shelter marks where the Ellsworths’ summer home once stood.

The garden is considered eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Park staff stabilize and repair the sculptures with Ellsworth’s mortar mix, keeping the work anchored to the outcrop he shaped rather than rebuilding it as a polished formal garden.