Best Things to Do in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Palm Beach Gardens is not a sightseeing city. There is no lighthouse, no pier, no historic main street to walk. What there is instead is a set of things you can do, most of them run by the City itself or by the resort and the shopping centers along PGA Boulevard: a public golf course and a par-3, a municipal racquet center, an aquatic complex, a Sunday market, a PGA TOUR event each spring, three shopping districts, and thousands of acres of County natural area on the western side. The ocean is not one of them, and this guide says so plainly.

It is organized in two parts. First, what is physically inside the City of Palm Beach Gardens, verified on the City's or the venue's own site. Then what is worth the trip outside it, with the municipality named for each, because North County geography is confusing and a guide should make it less so. Hours, fees, schedules and conditions change; every entry links to the page that carries the current version.

Golf inside the City

Sandhill Crane Golf Club**, 9500 Sandhill Crane Drive, is owned and operated by the City of Palm Beach Gardens and open to the public. The City's pages describe two courses: a par-72 championship course, redesigned by Dusenberry Design in 2013 and playing to 6,500 yards through pines, palms and marsh west of the Turnpike, and The Nest, a Nicklaus Design par-3 that opened in the summer of 2023. Tee times are booked through the City, and the Dancing Crane restaurant at the clubhouse is open to the public. It is the answer to the question most people ask first: you do not need to belong to a club to play golf in this City.

PGA National** is the other half of the picture, with a different access rule. The PGA National Members Club lists five courses, the Champion, the Palmer, the Fazio, the Match and the Staple short course, 79 holes in all. The resort's own FAQ says course access is reserved for resort guests and members, based on availability, and it publishes stay-and-play packages for guests. So the way in without a membership is a resort stay, not a walk-up tee time, and the resort's pages carry what is available on a given date.

Watching golf is its own activity here. The Champion Course hosts the PGA TOUR's Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches, the event long known as the Honda Classic, played at PGA National since 2007. The TOUR publishes each year's dates and the sponsor name can change; the course and the Bear Trap, holes 15 through 17, are the constants.

One correction, because it was on this page before. The PGA of America is not headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens. It was, and it opened its new headquarters in Frisco, Texas, on August 22, 2022. The City's real golf history is older and runs through BallenIsles, whose history page records that the club opened as PGA National Golf Club, hosted the 1971 PGA Championship, the first major played in Florida, became JDM Country Club in 1973 and took its current name in 1988.

Racquet sports, swimming and the City's recreation campus

The City runs three separate facilities here, and they are not the same building.

The Tennis & Pickleball Center**, 5110 117th Court North, is the dedicated racquet facility: 20 Har-Tru clay tennis courts, 10 pickleball courts and 4 hard tennis courts, all lighted, with a pro shop, a cafe, year-round programming for all ages and abilities, and USTA leagues and tournaments for able-bodied and wheelchair players. The City notes it won the USTA's 2025 National Outstanding Facility Award, and a previous one in 2014. Court fees, lessons and league sign-ups are on the City's pages. Next door, the Gardens North County District Park, 5101 117th Court North, opened in 2019 on 82 acres with seven lighted multipurpose fields.

The Aquatic Complex**, 4420 Burns Road, has a 25-yard competition pool, a main pool with lap lanes, a beach entry, a dive well and climbing walls, and a splash zone with slides. Lap swimming, open swim and lessons run on a published schedule with resident and non-resident rates.

Burns Road Community Center**, 4404 Burns Road, beside the pool, carries the gymnasiums, fitness classes, youth and adult programs, and indoor open-gym sessions that include pickleball, basketball and volleyball on a seasonal schedule. The Recreation Department lists everything it runs, and the schedules change by season.

The Gardens GreenMarket and the City calendar

The Gardens GreenMarket** is a City-run Sunday market at the City Hall Municipal Campus, 10500 North Military Trail, with produce, prepared food, flowers, crafts and live entertainment. It operates seasonally; the City's page carries the current season's dates, hours and any cancellations, and this guide deliberately does not.

The City also keeps an active events calendar and a recreation calendar that cover seasonal events, concerts, camps and programs. Rather than list what is on this month, check those pages. The City's Art in Public Places program, which requires larger non-residential developments to put one percent of construction cost into public art or into the City's art fund, is why sculpture turns up at shopping centers and office parks; the City has published a scavenger hunt for finding it.

The shopping and dining districts

Three centers on or just off PGA Boulevard do most of the City's shopping, dining and evening-out work, and each is a place to park once and walk:

• The Gardens Mall**, 3101 PGA Boulevard. An enclosed regional mall, open since 1988, with more than 150 stores and restaurants by its own count.
• Downtown at the Gardens**, 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens Avenue. An open-air center of shops and restaurants beside the mall.
• PGA Commons**, on the south side of PGA Boulevard between I-95 and the Turnpike. A mixed-use strip of restaurants, galleries, offices and apartments.

Alton Town Center, 5320 Donald Ross Road, serves the north side of the City the same way. The restaurants themselves are covered, venue by venue, in the eat, drink and hang out guide.

Natural areas on the City's western and eastern edges

The open land that surrounds the City is mostly Palm Beach County's, run by its Environmental Resources Management department, and each site carries a Palm Beach Gardens address.

• Loxahatchee Slough Natural Area**, 13,025 acres north and south of PGA Boulevard west of the Turnpike, is the County's largest natural area and the headwaters of the Loxahatchee River. The main entrance is at 11855 Beeline Highway, with a paved trail, an observation platform and natural-surface trails to a fishing pier and tower.
• Karen T. Marcus Sandhill Crane Access Park, 8175 PGA Boulevard, is the Slough's eastern gateway, with an observation tower and the Jeaga Wildways multi-use trail along the C-18 Canal. The kayak and canoe launch** at 8311 PGA Boulevard puts paddlers on a two-mile one-way trail through the natural area.
• Frenchman's Forest Natural Area**, 12201 Prosperity Farms Road, on the City's eastern side, is 172 acres with a paved 0.4-mile trail, three sandy trails, a boardwalk through cypress swamp and an observation platform over tidal swamp, open sunrise to sunset.

Two cautions. Hours, trail closures and water levels are on each County page, and these are natural areas rather than parks: no lifeguards, no concessions, and the Slough's paddle trail depends on water conditions. And a Palm Beach Gardens address on a County site does not settle whether the parcel is inside the City line; for an activities guide it does not need to, since the County runs them either way. The hidden gems guide goes further into each.

Scenes from Palm Beach Gardens

The ocean is outside the City

Palm Beach Gardens does not front the Atlantic. Every beach a resident uses is in another municipality, and the honest guide names them:

• Juno Beach, the Town east of the City. Juno Beach Park, 14775 US Highway One, is a Palm Beach County park with guarded swimming, a surfing area and the County's pedestrian fishing pier, which Loggerhead Marinelife Center, 14200 US Highway 1, manages. The Center itself is a sea turtle hospital with free admission and guided tours.
• Jupiter, the Town to the north, with County parks on its oceanfront and the dog-beach corridor. Our Jupiter beach access guide lists the crossovers.
• Singer Island, where John D. MacArthur Beach State Park sits at 10900 Jack Nicklaus Drive, North Palm Beach, with a boardwalk over the estuary and a nature center. It is a state park in North Palm Beach, not a Gardens park, whatever its name suggests.

We don't publish drive times to any of them. They depend on where in the City you start, the road, the season and the hour.

Worth the trip beyond Palm Beach Gardens

Each of these is outside the City, in the municipality named, and each is run by someone whose page carries the current hours and conditions:

• Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, Jupiter. The 1860 tower inside the BLM's Outstanding Natural Area, with climbing tours run by the Loxahatchee River Historical Society. Our Jupiter things to do guide covers it.
• Riverbend Park, Jupiter. A 644-acre County park on the Loxahatchee River at 9060 Indiantown Road, with hiking, biking, equestrian and paddling trails, connected to the Sandhill Crane Access Park by the Bluegill Trail.
• Peanut Island, in the Intracoastal near the Lake Worth Inlet, off Riviera Beach. An 80-acre County park reached by boat or water taxi, with a guarded snorkeling lagoon and permit-only campsites.
• The Norton Museum of Art and downtown West Palm Beach, south of the City. The Norton is at 1450 South Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach.

Before you go

• Check the weather and any official alerts before an outdoor plan. South Florida's wet season runs May 15 through October 15 per the National Weather Service, hurricane season June 1 through November 30 per the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and heat is a planning factor for most of the year.
• Confirm the schedule. The GreenMarket, pool hours, open-gym sessions and much of the City's programming are seasonal, and the Cognizant Classic's dates move year to year.
• Confirm access. PGA National's courses are for resort guests and members; Sandhill Crane is public. The Slough's paddle trail depends on water levels.
• Bring the right expectations to a natural area: no lifeguards, no concessions, sunrise to sunset.
• Remember where the City ends. The beach, the lighthouse, the river park and the museum are each in another municipality.

If you only have one day in Palm Beach Gardens

Morning on the City's championship course or The Nest at Sandhill Crane, or on the clay at the Tennis & Pickleball Center. Midday at one of the three PGA Boulevard centers. Afternoon on the Jeaga Wildways trail from the Sandhill Crane Access Park, or on the boardwalk at Frenchman's Forest. On a Sunday in season, start at the GreenMarket instead. If it is tournament week, the Champion Course replaces all of it.

If you want the ocean, you leave the City and head east, to Juno Beach, to Jupiter or to Singer Island. That is the one thing this guide cannot put inside Palm Beach Gardens, and it is the thing to know before you move here. For the rest of the picture, read what living in Palm Beach Gardens is really like and the local guide.