Greater Avenues Water Conservation Demonstration Gardens

 The Greater Avenues Water Conservation Demonstration Gardens (phew what a mouthful). Is a tiny community park with some desert gardens. As the title implies, it is located in The Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake City. It features 5 garden types that thrive in our arid climate. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this, but whatever I was doing I just quickly added it to my mental list of things to maybe check out. So after a day of shorter adventures in the area, I thought we would come do it. So, just going to say, while it is an interesting concept, it wasn’t particularly exciting to me, so I did not love it. But hey, they can’t all be winners.

Quick Details:

Length: About .14 of a mile out and back.
Trail Type: Out and back.
Difficulty: Completely paved option DR2.
Elevation Gain: Eh, 10-15 feet.
Restroom: No.
Dogs? No. Big Cottonwood Canyon is watershed.
Other Info:

To Get Here:

Take South Temple to I street, head north tp 11th Avenue, go right. Go a few blocks to Terrace Hills Drive. It will be on the southeast corner. You can park at 11th avenue park, or along the street.

The Trail:

The bottom of the park.

Sadly this sign is way too sun faded to read. It looks like it basically has the same information as the city website does (outside link).

Bottom with some yucca looking plants.

Neat little arbor.

Little faux river channel.

So, if each of the 5 garden types have a specific area within the gardens, it is not signed at all, or particularly clear. So I suspect that maybe they are all just mixed up through out?

Fun giant rock slab bridge.

It looks like this might be a pamphlet box, but it is empty.

Looking uphill.

The little faux stream again.

Random paver path.

Back to the main path.

The top. Well. I guess that is it. Not a whole lot going on here.

The website does state that this replaced a weed filled lot though, so this is absolutely an improvement for the community.

The upper sign is in better condition, and does show that the garden is sectioned into the different zones. Well, alrighty then.

So this top area is montane foothills.

Little bit of downtown peaking through the trees.

Heading back down.

11th Avenue Park across the street.

We took a paver path up into what I think is the montane meadow part.

Pretty flowering bush.

Back on the main path. 

We climbed another set of pavers and found this cemetery next door. At first we thought it was a new cemetery we never heard of, but as we learned later, it is part of the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Continuing down. The map is a a little hard to distinguish the separate garden areas but I think we are entering the dry riparian area.

Juniper, I think.

More of the park. By the shrub steppe area.

Back to the pergola.

The area at the bottom. This is desert community.

The main entrance off of 11th avenue and Terrace Hills Dr.

View across 11th Avenue.

We were parked just to the east here, so we went through this paver path. On the way in I did not think it was appropriate to cute through her, but on the way out, the path starts out paved, plus it is on the map so I feel a lot better cutting through now.

Random cemetery gate we parked next to.

There is not a lot to this, but it was kind of a neat add on to our shorter hikes we did today. I definitely would not come for just this. Normally I enjoy conservation gardens, maybe we came too early and it would be be better later in the season? Meh. But I will reiterate, it is certainly better than a lot full of weeds. Meh, 1 squirrel.

As for difficulty, the main path is paved, DR2.

Dogs are allowed, leashed. Please clean up after your furry friends.