Short Hills Has Two Fall Walking Seasons, and They Run on Different Rules

The gate at Greenwood Gardens only opens if you have a ticket and a car. You drive in, hand over your admission, and by 5 p.m. sharp, everyone is back in the parking lot. Three minutes away on Forest Drive South, the gate at Cora Hartshorn Arboretum is never locked. No ticket booth, no last entry time, no fee. You walk in whenever the light lets you, and you walk out whenever you're done.

Most people who live in Short Hills treat these two properties as interchangeable versions of the same thing: pretty grounds, a nice fall walk, somewhere to bring visiting family. They aren't the same thing. One runs on a ticketed, seasonal calendar that closes for the year on November 8. The other runs on no calendar at all. Knowing which one you're standing in front of changes how you plan the next seven weeks.

The Two Gardens, Two Clocks

Greenwood Gardens is a 28-acre former private estate, tucked inside the 2,110 acres of preserved parkland that make up South Mountain Reservation. It operates as a nonprofit with a defined visiting season, and for 2026 that season runs May 1 through Sunday, November 8, open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last entry at 3:30. Entry is by vehicle only, parking is complimentary, and admission runs $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, and $5 for children.

Cora Hartshorn Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary operates on the opposite model. Its trails are open to the public from dawn to dusk, every day, free of charge, all year. The land was gifted to Cora Hartshorn by her father, Stewart Hartshorn, in 1923. When she died in 1958, she willed the 16.5 acres to Millburn Township, and it has stayed a public resource ever since.

That difference in ownership structure, one a private estate turned members-supported nonprofit, the other a township-held public trust, is the reason the two properties feel so different to walk. Greenwood asks you to plan ahead. Cora Hartshorn asks you to just show up.

What's Left on Greenwood's Calendar Before the Gate Closes

With seven weekends left before the public season ends on November 8, Greenwood's October-to-December program list reads like a countdown. There's a guided fall foliage walk paired with a practical session on preparing a home garden for the colder months, covering fall planting, pruning, and overwintering. There's a bird walk led by avian expert Dave Hall, focused on the species that pass through Greenwood's woodlands and the surrounding reservation on their way south. For members, there's an evening on the Main Lawn with the Bradford Hayes Quartet, timed to catch the last of the autumn light before the clocks change.

What's easy to miss is that Greenwood doesn't fully go dark after November 8. The garden has now participated for six consecutive years in the Christmas Bird Count, the long-running Audubon citizen science survey, as part of the Watchung Ridge Count. That event happens in December, well after the general public season closes, which means Greenwood keeps a foothold open through the winter for members and registered participants even after the ticket gate stops turning for everyone else. If you want general admission, though, November 8 is the real deadline. There's no walking in on a whim after that.

The Free Alternative Three Minutes Away

This is where Cora Hartshorn earns its place in the routine. Its roughly three miles of trails cut through terrain shaped by actual glaciers, including a kettle moraine and a natural amphitheater carved by the retreating ice sheet. The 16.5 acres hold 45 species of trees, some tulip trees estimated at 275 years old, more than 150 species of wildflowers, and around 100 species of birds that use the site as habitat or a stopover.

None of that requires a ticket, a car, or a specific day of the week. The arboretum's trails run dawn to dusk, every day of the year, which means the walk you take in late October is available again in January, when Greenwood's gate is closed and the parking lot is empty. If your fall habit is a Sunday walk before the football game or a weekday loop after work, Cora Hartshorn is the version of that habit that doesn't disappear when the season changes.

The Arboretum's Fall Calendar Runs on a Different Budget

The contrast in access mirrors a contrast in how each place raises money. Greenwood, with its ticket structure and membership tiers, funds itself the way a cultural institution does. Cora Hartshorn, free to the public, funds its forest restoration work through direct community events instead.

The clearest example this fall is the third annual Cornhole Throw Down, held at Boxcar Bar & Grill, right next to the Short Hills train station. Teams and individuals compete, kids get their own free cornhole and activities, and every dollar raised goes toward continued forest restoration at the arboretum. Later in the season, the arboretum runs its Fall Family Campout, an overnight event with a home-cooked meal, a guided evening scavenger hunt, and marshmallows over the fire for families willing to trade a night indoors for a night in the woods. Neither event charges arboretum admission because there isn't any to charge. The fundraising happens elsewhere, at the bar next to the train tracks, not at a gate.

Where to Eat Before or After

The two properties sit on different sides of town, and that shapes where you end up afterward. A trip to Greenwood, off Old Short Hills Road, puts you closer to the Mall at Short Hills side of town, where the food scene has shifted noticeably in the past two years. Eataly opened its first New Jersey location there in November 2024, a 17,000-square-foot Italian marketplace with roughly 230 seats between its restaurant and bar, a pasta counter, a pizzeria turning out Neapolitan-style pies, and a retail section stocked with imported Italian goods. Earlier this year, Pura Vida Miami opened nearby with an all-day breakfast menu built around avocado toast, açaí bowls, and cold-pressed juices, its first New Jersey outpost for a chain that's been building a following across the Southeast.

A trip to Cora Hartshorn, off Forest Drive South, puts you closer to the train station side of town, where Boxcar Bar & Grill sits right next to the tracks. It's a different kind of stop after a walk, less polished marketplace, more neighborhood bar, which fits the free, walk-up character of the arboretum itself. The two routines, garden-then-mall or trail-then-train-station-bar, end up matching the personality of the property you started at.

The Short Version

Short Hills isn't short on places to walk this fall. It's short on time with one of them. Greenwood Gardens closes its gate for general admission on November 8, and after that, getting back in for a casual visit means waiting until May. Cora Hartshorn never closes, never charges, and never asks you to plan a week ahead. The smart move this season is simple: use the next seven weekends for Greenwood, because that's a limited window, and build the habit at Cora Hartshorn, because that's the one that will still be there in February.

If you're thinking about what a season like this looks like from a different house in town, or what it might mean to trade a longer drive to South Mountain Reservation for a shorter walk to Forest Drive South, that's a conversation Sodeli Michelle is glad to have. Let's Connect.