The Peace Garden started in 1929 as a rock garden. Falling into disrepair in the 1940s, it was rediscovered under overgrown trees 40 years later, according to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's historical account of public land by David C. Smith. From the 1980s, park employees and volunteers worked to turn the neglected land into the lush Peace Garden, incorporating neighbors' statements about peace, as well as arrangements of rocks that include some found at the atomic blast sites of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Located in Lyndale Park close to the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird Sanctuary and Rose Garden, it's one of the few public parks in the city that asks drivers to pay for parking.