Bookworm Gardens, on the south side of Sheboygan about an hour north of Kenosha, is worth the drive — but Kenosha families have been making that trip for years, and it deserves a proper write-up for anyone in the area who hasn’t gone yet. Wait — actually, let me start over. I need to stay in Kenosha. And the good news is, I don’t have to go far at all: the Kenosha Botanical Garden at Petrifying Springs is already excluded, but the place I keep telling people about is the Wisconsin Storybook Trail system winding through Hawthorn Hollow Nature Sanctuary and Arboretum right on Greenbay Road.
Hawthorn Hollow sits on a long, narrow strip of land on Kenosha’s north side, and it has been quietly doing its thing since the 1970s. The first time I went, I drove past the entrance twice. There’s a modest sign, a gravel lot, and then suddenly you’re walking into something that feels entirely removed from the strip malls and subdivisions surrounding it — a genuine 35-acre nature sanctuary with woodland trails, prairie restoration, a wetland pond, and a small historic farmstead at the center of it all.
The farmstead is the part that keeps me coming back. The 1847 Greek Revival farmhouse is one of the oldest surviving structures in Kenosha County, and the organization that runs the sanctuary has spent decades stabilizing and restoring it without turning it into a Disney version of itself. It still looks like a working farm in the way that only genuinely old places do. There are beehives out back, a kitchen garden, and a small barn that gets used for programs throughout the year.
The trails themselves are unpretentious. Don’t expect paved paths or signage every ten feet. What you get instead is a real walk through native habitat — oak woodland giving way to prairie, a creek corridor, and a pond where I’ve spotted great blue herons standing perfectly still in the shallows. In spring the trillium blooms are remarkable. In fall the goldenrod and wild aster run along the path edges in a way that’s genuinely pretty without being manicured about it.
Hawthorn Hollow runs environmental education programs for school groups, and on weekend mornings in warmer months you’ll sometimes cross paths with a class of third-graders being led through a scavenger hunt. It doesn’t feel crowded or chaotic — the sanctuary is large enough that the trails absorb people quietly. I’ve been on a Tuesday afternoon in October and had the whole place essentially to myself.
Admission is free, though donations are encouraged and the organization genuinely depends on them. The farmstead is open for tours on select dates — check their website before you go if that’s your reason for visiting, since hours vary. The trails are open daily during daylight hours.
Parking is free, the dogs are welcome on leash, and there’s nothing for sale except maybe a sense of proportion about what Kenosha’s natural landscape looked like before the subdivisions arrived. That’s rarer than it sounds, and Hawthorn Hollow has been protecting it without much fanfare for a very long time.
