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Colonial Park
150 Mettlers Road, near County Route 514, Franklin Township (near East Millstone) 732-873-2459
Open daily 8 am to sunset
Colonial Park is 651 acres of gardens, nature areas, and activity trails. The Delaware and Raritan Canal runs through the western side of the park. The park has two picnic areas, a 1.4 mile fitness course, three ponds (stocked annually with fish), paddle boating, mini golf, a playground, a nature trail, an eighteen-hole golf course, and supervised ice-skating and cross-country skiing in the wintertime.
Of particular interest are the gardens, including the Arboretum, the Fragrance and Sensory Garden, the Perennial Garden, and the award-winning and world renowned Rudolph van der Goot Rose Garden. The rose garden features over 3000 roses of 325 varieties (A $1 donation is requested at the rose garden). The Fragrance and Sensory Garden is highly recommended for children and those with disabilities. In this sunken, circular garden, surrounded by a stone wall and raised beds, visitors are encouraged to reach out and touch and smell the plants.
Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park
Park Headquarters, 145 Mapleton Road, Kingston; 609-924-5705
Free admission.
Park open sunrise to sunset.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal (D&R), a 44-mile waterway opened in 1834, crossed the narrow waist of New Jersey, connecting Philadelphia and New York. To avoid the longer ocean voyage around Cape May, boats entered the canal near Bordentown on the Delaware River. Traveling north through seven locks, they were lifted 58 feet to the summit in Trenton. Seven more locks lowered the vessels to tidewater at New Brunswick, on the Raritan River. The canal’s main water source was the Delaware River. Water was diverted at Bull’s Island, north of Stockton, into a 22-mile canal feeder, which delivered water to the summit in Trenton.
Somerset County boasts twenty-two miles of this historic waterway. The historic district of Griggstown offers private canoe rentals. The canal and its buildings were included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The next year the legislature established the D&R Canal State Park, which provides much-needed open space for the people of Central New Jersey. Visitors can hike, jog, canoe, ride horses, cross-country ski, bike and fish in the tranquil ribbon of green which connects the floodplain of the Millstone with the Piedmont hills and gives modern New Jerseyans a sense of their 19th-century heritage.
To view a map showing parking areas and access points, visit their website.
Doyle’s Unami Farm
771 Mill Lane, near Route 514 West
Hillsborough
Open April through November by appointment only.
Tours can be set up by calling 908-369-3187.
info@doyles-farm.com
Admission charged
At Doyle’s Unami Farm, visitors can plant or harvest crops (depending on the season), care for farm animals, or take a scenic hayride around the farm. Fall attractions include picking pumpkins, corn, and winter squash. The farm is also known for its annual corn mazes. Doyle’s Farm has four different mazes to offer its visitors, including the Mirror Maze, Scholar’s Corn Maze, Universal Labyrinth maze, and the Kinder-Hay Maze. Doyle’s Unami Farm is a great outing for parents and kids alike.
The Doyles are a fifth generation farm family. So what does Unami mean? The Unami were subtribe of the Lenape. They inhabited the central part of what is today New Jersey. The name means "the people down the river."
Duke Island Park
Old York Road, near the Intersection of State Route 202 and County Route 567, Bridgewater
Free admission.
Located in Bridgewater Township, Duke Island Park is a site of rich natural beauty which offers varied recreational experiences. Truly an "island" park, it is nestled between the historic Raritan Power Canal and the scenic Raritan River. The Somerset County Park Commission acquired this 339-acre site in 1958, and has developed it to provide a wide variety of active and passive recreational opportunities and special events for park visitors. Duke Island Park offers bike trails, five picnic areas, playgrounds, two softball fields (available by permit for leagues and tournaments) for practice or a friendly pickup game, and cross country skiing. The Raritan River is stocked by the New Jersey Department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife, and offers prime fishing locations for beginner and expert anglers. Hikers, walkers, and birdwatchers may take advantage of the trails which follow along the river and pass through the extensive wooded areas. Concerts on Sunday evenings in July and August. The Visitors Center is located near the main parking area, and houses the park ranger office and rest rooms. Rangers are available for information on the park recreation activities, and brochures and maps of the Park Commission facilities and programs are available.
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Hutcheson Memorial Forest
Amwell Road (County Route 514), about 3/4 mile east of East Millstone
The forest is open 8:30-4:30 daily, for guided tours only. To schedule a tour, please call 732-932-9631 or contact Dr. Edmund Stiles by email at tstiles@rci.rutgers.edu.
The Hutcheson Memorial Forest is one of the last uncut forests in the Mid-Atlantic states. The tract, administered and protected by Rutgers University, consists of 26 hectares of primeval, mixed oak forest and is apparently the only uncut upland forest in New Jersey. The old forest is surrounded by more than 70 hectares of young forest, abandoned agricultural fields undergoing plant succession, and research plots. The forest and surrounding land is one of the most intensively studied areas in North America. For example, the long term studies of birds and of vegetation change after agricultural abandonment are some of the longest running studies of this kind, anywhere. The research conducted at HMF has resulted in more than 250 scientific publications, and is known worldwide for long-term ecological, botanical and zoological research.
The Hutcheson Memorial Forest has enjoyed the interest and active support of many people and organizations in preserving the primeval oak forest. The Citizens Committee for the Preservation of Mettler's Woods was the first organization devoted to saving the woods when development threatened. The committee raised funds from private donors throughout New Jersey and the U.S. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners clinched the initial preservation effort with a donation to purchase the property in 1955. The Nature Conservancy has been a long time supporter and partner with Rutgers in the preservation of HMF. Franklin Township and the New Jersey Green Acres Program have been instrumental in recent efforts to bolster protection and provide buffering of the forest. Thus, the Hutcheson Memorial Forest, named for William L. Hutcheson, a past president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, is a prime example of cooperation and partnership in conservation.
How can people see the Forest? The public is welcome on the regularly scheduled tours given on Sundays throughout the year. These tours are led by Rutgers University faculty who volunteer their time. The tours are about one-two hours in length, depending on the expertise of the tour leader, the interest of the group, and what is flowering, flying, calling or crawling. Natural history, forest ecology, conservation issues and ecological relationships are pointed out and discussed. There is no need for reservations, but groups of more than ten (10) people, or people wishing a tour at some other time, must arrange for a private tour. Such private tours are lead by graduate students in ecology and biology, and a fee of $40.00 must be paid by the group to the student guide. In order to arrange a tour, write at least two weeks in advance, to: Dr. Edmund Stiles Director, Hutcheson Memorial Forest Department of Ecology, Evolution & Natural Resources, J.B. Smith Hall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Leonard J. Buck Garden
11 Layton Road
Far Hills
908-234-2677
M-F 10-4; Sat 10-5; Sun 12-5. Closed on weekends and major holidays in Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar.
The Leonard J. Buck Garden is one of the premier rock gardens in the eastern United States. Begun in the 1930s, the garden consists of 14 acres of alpine and woodland gardens in a 33-acre wooded valley. Wildflowers, trees and flowering shrubs blossom in a rocky ravine. Named for Leonard J. Buck, who developed the garden as part of his estate, it was donated to the Somerset County Park Commission by Helen Buck in 1976.
The garden is sculpted from a glacial stream valley, where waterfalls once cascaded out of Moggy Hollow to the east, then subsided, leaving behind rock faces, outcroppings, ponds and a stream. It took the eye of a geologist, fascinated by mineral-topography-plant relationships, to see the valley's potential to showcase the finest of human-bred cultivars and nature's prettiest wild plants.
The geologist who bought the land was Leonard J. Buck. As a trustee of the New York Botanical Gardens in the 1930's, he met Mr. Zenon Schreiber, landscape architect, and together they created the garden in the valley. Mr. Buck discovered the layout of outcroppings, and the men chiseled and shoveled, picked and blasted to expose the basalt--once hot lava that formed the Second Watchung Mountain about 175 million years ago. They worked by eye and proportion, with never a drawing on paper. Mr. Schreiber designed the plantings and Mr. Buck worked the rock. Their vision was to produce a woodland garden, composed of many individual gardens, each with their own character and micro-habitat, but united, flowing, as one. They succeeded.
Sourland Mountain Preserve
East Mountain Road, Hillsborough
908-231-0802, x 21, Emily
Free admission.
Open dawn to dusk every day
The 3,025-acre Sourland Mountain Preserve is administered by the Somerset County Park Commission. The preserve provides passive recreational opportunities in an undisturbed natural setting. The park occupies the northeast Sourland region which stretches southeast across Hillsborough and Montgomery townships, through southern Hunterdon and northern Mercer counties, to the Delaware River. Hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding; fishing in pond (with valid license). Free ranger programs (fishing, tree identification hike, and general interpretive hike).
It is thought that the name sourland is derived from “sorrel-land” which describes the sorrel-colored (reddish-brown) soils encountered by the pioneering German farmers.
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