Milton & Catherine Hershey Conservatory (Hershey Gardens)

The conservatory opened in 2016 revives an old local tradition. In the early twentieth century Milton and Catherine Hershey built glass conservatories to display plants in winter, and they became a popular place to visit. One of them, built in 1909 next to their home, High Point, was removed around 1928 when the grounds became a golf course. A conservatory opened in 1910 near the entrance to Hershey Park was taken down around 1924; another, built in 1914 in the part of the park used by the zoo, now houses ZooAmerica's Great Southwest exhibit. The large Hershey Estates Greenhouse, built in 1930 on Mansion Road, was dismantled in 1961.

Hershey Gardens was established in 1936 on Milton Hershey's instructions and opened in June 1937 with a rose garden of 7,000 roses, which drew 200,000 visitors in its first season. On 20 June 1998 a seasonal outdoor Butterfly House opened, built with a wing salvaged from the 1930 greenhouse; that older structure was replaced in 2010 by a steel-and-mesh building.

Ground was broken for the Milton & Catherine Hershey Conservatory on 30 April 2015 and the building opened on 1 July 2016, according to the Hershey Community Archives. It became the garden's new entrance, and its year-round Butterfly Atrium took over from the 1998 Butterfly House.

The conservatory sits at the top of the garden, overlooking the historic rose garden, and its design deliberately looks back to the conservatories the Hersheys built in the early 1900s. The garden publishes neither the architect's name nor the dimensions; OpenStreetMap records the building as a conservatory just south of the rose garden.

It is made up of four distinct areas: the Butterfly Atrium, the Rose Garden Pavilion, an Educational and Horticultural Wing, and a Welcome Pavilion that serves as the entrance to the garden. The atrium keeps a warm, tropical climate, which the butterflies need, around a water feature. A chrysalis cabinet displays hundreds of pupae hanging until the butterflies emerge and are released into the atrium. The earlier Butterfly House of 1998 had reused a wing of the 1930 estate greenhouse before giving way, in 2010, to a steel-and-mesh structure.

The atrium holds hundreds of butterflies, including dozens of rare species from South and Central America, Africa and Asia as well as North American varieties; the species change frequently. The garden names among its favourites the Common Morpho, Pearl Charaxes, Great Mormon, Leopard Lacewing, Paper Kite, Postman, Common Birdwing and Great Orange Tip.

The planting favours nectar plants, a vital food source for butterflies: a cacao tree, whose pods are used to make chocolate, a plumeria, whose flowers are strung into leis, Hawaiian Ti 'Red Ruby' and 'Red Sister', Golden Shrimp Plant and jatropha. In the Hersheys' early conservatories, palms, ferns, bay trees, azaleas and boxwood reached their peak at Easter alongside primroses, annuals and spring bulbs.

The conservatory is the entrance to Hershey Gardens, a 23-acre garden where a visit continues through the historic rose garden, the themed gardens and the Children's Garden, opened in 2003, with more than twenty small gardens across one and a half acres. Because the Butterfly Atrium runs all year, the conservatory makes a worthwhile destination in midwinter, when the outdoor garden is dormant. Strollers are not allowed inside the atrium.

The garden adjoins The Hotel Hershey; in Hershey Park, the 1914 conservatory now houses ZooAmerica's Great Southwest exhibit, a chance to set the modern building beside a survivor of the earlier ones.