For four nights each October, the paths at Cape Fear Botanical Garden stop being a quiet place to look at camellias and start behaving like a rabbit hole. The 2026 edition of Halloween at the BOOtanical Garden runs October 22 through 25, 4:30 to 9 p.m. nightly, and this year the Garden has gone all the way down the hole: the theme is Alice in Wonderland, with the White Rabbit as the invitation and a Wonderland of curious creatures, mysterious plantings, and larger-than-life set pieces waiting along the trail.
The event is presented by Fayetteville PWC, and it is built as an outdoor, walk-through, interactive experience rather than a stage show or a haunted house. Visitors move at their own pace through thousands of lights and light displays, past candy stations (bring your own bag), photo opportunities, and animated scenes. The Garden's staff and volunteers, known here as the Boo Crew, dress as characters from Wonderland and station themselves along the route. There is a costume contest, plus food, beverages, and a vendor market. The Garden bills the theme as "Grow," a pun that lets the horticulture do the heavy lifting: the fantastical plants and creepy-crawly critters are the point, not just the backdrop.
The opening night, October 22, is Dog Night, the one evening when leashed dogs are welcome to walk the trail with their people.
Tickets are cheaper in advance than at the gate, and the gap is wide enough to matter. Advance tickets for non-members ages 11 and up are $14, against $25 for walk-ups; members pay $12 in advance or $20 at the door. The pricing structure is aimed squarely at families who might otherwise spend the same money on a corn maze.
What makes the BOOtanical Garden unusual is that it is a botanical garden doing Halloween with its own vocabulary. The template is familiar from the Garden's winter event, Holiday Lights in the Garden, which has for years turned the same grounds into an evening light display in December. The Halloween version takes that infrastructure, thousands of bulbs strung through trees and along the paths, and layers a narrative over it. The result is closer to an immersive theater walk than a festival midway: there is no single stage, no fixed showtime, and the experience is whatever order you happen to walk it in.
The setting itself carries more history than most Halloween attractions. Cape Fear Botanical Garden traces to 1989, when a small group of Fayetteville gardening enthusiasts, led by Bruce Williams, Martha Duell, and Roger Mercer, met at Duell's kitchen table and decided the city needed a world-class botanical garden. That same year the group, incorporated as the Friends of the Botanical Garden, secured a lease on 67 acres of city-owned land formerly known as Pope Park and drew up a 20-year master plan. Early volunteers identified more than 450 native plants on the property. The City of Fayetteville later donated the leased land outright, securing the Garden's future, and the site has since grown to roughly 80 acres between the Cape Fear River and Cross Creek.
Much of that acreage holds pieces of regional history that visitors walk past on the way to the candy stations. The Heritage Garden complex, donated by Hazel McCauley with support from Larry and Susan Snider, includes an 1800s farmhouse, a general store, a corn crib, and a smokehouse. A 1930s tobacco barn was moved to the site from Eastover. The McLaurin Camellia Garden holds more than 100 camellias transplanted from Mary McLaurin's garden in Bath, North Carolina. Fayetteville Technical Community College built and dedicated the Wesley Meredith Horticulture Education Center on the grounds. A Halloween trail that winds past a relocated tobacco barn and a transplanted camellia collection is a distinctly eastern North Carolina kind of spooky.
The Garden has now been running public programming for more than 35 years, and the BOOtanical Garden has settled into the role of its signature fall event, the counterpart to the December lights. The formula has been refined across several years: the 2025 edition ran October 23 through 26 under the theme "Harmony in Nature," with the Boo Crew dressed as Bug Buddies, Tree Huggers, and Turtle Trackers, and the costume contest presented by Kids First Pediatrics. The 2026 edition swaps the nature-mystery framing for Lewis Carroll and hands the sponsorship to Fayetteville PWC, but the bones are the same, and so is the pitch: Fayetteville's family Halloween extravaganza, where every garden path becomes an adventure.
For anyone planning to go, the practical notes are straightforward. The Garden is at 536 North Eastern Boulevard in Fayetteville, just off the I-95 corridor, which makes the event reachable for travelers as well as locals. Hours are 4:30 to 9 p.m. each night, October 22 through 25, 2026. Advance tickets are strongly advised given the walk-up premium, and the Dog Night slot on October 22 is the one to book if the dog is coming. Bring a bag for candy. Wear shoes that can handle gravel and mulch paths after dark. And expect the White Rabbit to be somewhere ahead of you on the trail, because this year he is the whole point.