Holly Loop

The Walk

From the southeast corner of the parking area, take the steps just to the right of where the Overlook Trail starts, and the path drops you into the collection. It’s short, but don’t let the distance fool you into striding — the loop packs a real little climb into its length, enough that it can feel steeper than a seventh of a mile has any right to, and enough that it’s worth slowing down for anyway. The whole point is to look.

And there’s more to look at than “holly.” The collection is built to show range: hollies with smooth, unarmored leaves and hollies with the classic spined ones; leaves splashed cream and gold like ‘Crinkle Variegated’ and ‘Pinto’; the tight little foliage of the Japanese holly Ilex crenata ‘Convexa’; the native American holly Ilex opaca ‘Ruth’. The berries — technically drupes, if a kid asks — don’t all come in fire-engine red, either. Start noticing, and a plant you thought you knew turns into a whole genus you didn’t.

Forest Skill — why the hollies here are sterile That word sterile on the label does more work than it looks. English holly (Ilex aquifolium) is one of the plants Forest Park crews spend real hours cutting and treating out in the wild forest — birds eat the berries, drop the seeds, and a fertile holly quietly seeds itself into a ravine where it doesn’t belong. The cultivars on this loop are bred not to do that. So the same plant is two different things a mile apart: a studied, well-behaved specimen here beside the parking lot, and an invasive to be pulled over the ridge. The loop is a small lesson in the difference between a garden and a forest.

Kid Quest This is a hunt. Find a holly leaf so smooth it wouldn’t poke you (there really is one), then find the spikiest one on the loop. Then go looking for berries — most are red, but see if you can spot a different color. Count how many kinds of holly you can tell apart just by the leaves. Do not taste the berries; they’re for the birds, not for you.

Before you go

Come in winter. This is one of the few trails in the park that’s genuinely at its best when everything else looks its worst — the berries are the whole show, and they peak when the deciduous arboretum around them has dropped bare. The gravel helps, too: it drains and stays firm through the wet season, while the arboretum’s dirt trails turn soft.

It’s tiny and it’s foot-only, so think of it less as a hike than as a five-minute detour with a payoff — a thing to fold into a larger arboretum loop, or a quick, worthwhile stretch of the legs right where you parked. Stand in the middle of it in January, with red berries all around you and a bare gray forest just beyond, and the little trail makes its quiet case.