Troll Hunting At Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

We love Thomas Dambo’s trolls!

We first discovered them in Illinois, then found more of them when we were in Kentucky. While on the 40k To Far Away challenge with Frequent Miler, I built in stops in Copenhagen, Denmark and Brussels, Belgium to find more of them there. Those were followed up with visiting Isak Heartstone in Colorado a couple of years ago.

Shae and I were therefore both excited to visit Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens because in 2021 Thomas Dambo, some of his assistants from Denmark and a team of volunteers from Maine built five more trolls for an exhibit called Guardians of the Seeds. We were even more excited because my parents had joined us on the road trip for a month from the UK and this was their first opportunity to see his trolls in real life.

While staying just outside of Portland, ME, we therefore drove over to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. We had a wonderful time at the gardens, particularly because of being able to find all the Guardians of the Seeds, along with the Hidden Seeds.

About The Guardians Of The Seeds

After getting our tickets at the gardens, we went outside where there were information boards all about the trolls.

One of the boards had suggested timings for how long it would take to see all the trolls. Those are very conservative timings, although they might be true if you’ve got little kids who’ll be walking more slowly and wanting to play at each troll. It suggests 4-5 hours to see all five trolls and the Hidden Seeds, but we were able to do that within 2.5-3 hours. That included visiting other parts of the gardens and stopping for lunch, although we did put a priority on finding the trolls.

All of Thomas Dambo’s trolls have a fairytale behind them, with the Guardians of the Seeds being no exception. Here’s their story:

As with all of Thomas Dambo’s other creations around the world, these trolls were crafted out of reclaimed wood.

After learning their story, it was time to find the Guardians.

How To Find The Trolls

When getting tickets for Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, you’ll get a map of the gardens. The locations of the five trolls are clearly marked on the map with footprints above their names. The one closest to the entrance is Roskva so we started with her, then made our way round to the others. There’s no one route you need to take as they don’t have to be found in a certain order, but the order we took was Roskva, Lilja, Birk, Soren and finally Gro.

The map makes it look like they might be spaced far apart. However, with the gardens only covering ~300 acres it doesn’t take too long to walk from one to the next – they’re only about 10 minutes at a time from each other if you’re walking at a regular speed.

Roskva

As I mentioned above, we started with Roskva who’s definitely one of the tallest trolls I’ve seen.

To give you a sense of her size, here are my parents next to her:

When arriving at each of the trolls, there’s an information board sharing details about that particular troll. According to the board next to Roskva:

Roskva is the heaviest, hardest and strongest of the trolls. Every day, Roskva climbs towards the sky, and every year she grows taller and wider. If a troll forgets something, they can always ask Roskva – she counts the seasons and remembers everything that happens around her.

Lilja

One of the nice things about the information boards next to each troll is that they share how you can interact with each one for your (and your children’s if applicable) safety, as well as the safety of the trolls. For Lilja, the troll etiquette was that you could climb on her legs, but not up past them.

That wasn’t possible with Roskva because she was standing up, whereas Lilja spends the day sitting down.

Lilja looked like she was a baby. Sure enough, here’s how the information board described her:

Just last summer, Lilja came out from her hiding place. The youngest of the trolls, she’s still just a child. She loves the colors and the scents of the flowers and when bees and butterflies fly among branches.

Birk

The third troll we found was Birk. Although not necessarily the tallest in terms of height from the ground, it did feel like he takes up the most square footage of any of the trolls we’ve seen thanks to his long arms and legs.

Here’s how he’s described:

Birk is the wisest and most mysterious of the trolls. He hides in the shadows and listens to the whispers of the soil. He knows everything that happens in the wild, and every day he tells tales to all the other creatures of the forest.

There was an employee of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at Birk’s location and he was also one of the people who’d helped in the construction of the trolls.

He was able to share all kinds of interesting information about the trolls:

• Birk has 9,000 metal screws
• 50 wooden pallets were used in the making of the trolls which were broken down by the volunteers
• It took two months to create all the trolls
• The head, hands and feet of the trolls were built in Copenhagen (where Thomas Dambo is from). They were shipped to Maine, with the rest of their bodies being built from the wooden pallets on site
• They expect the trolls to last 10+ years

He also shared that Birk’s beard was made with tree roots.

After taking a quick photo with Birk…

…we went behind Birk to check out his hair at the suggestion of the gardens’ employee. What’s the opposite of business in the front, party in the back? 😉

Soren

The fourth troll we found was Soren. Here’s how he’s described:

Soren is a very curious troll; his head is always turning and twisting, searching for places ever higher. He dreams about drifting around on a cloud in the sky, and when the wind is blowing, he loves to celebrate with a dance.

Due to his haphazard posture, you can’t climb on Soren.

Soren was definitely my favorite of the trolls as he looked like a very fun-loving character.

While Birk’s beard was made of tree roots, it looked like Soren’s hair was made with branches.

All of the trolls have a plaque on the back of them somewhere. These include a QR code which links to Thomas Dambo’s Troll Map website.

Gro

The fifth and final troll was Gro who looks like she’s meditating. Here’s her description:

Gro is the wanderer. Every fall she disappears, but the trolls are not worried because every spring she returns to the forest. On her return, Gro walks around to make sure every friend of hers is fed. After hurrying to catch a few sunbeams and a handful of raindrops, she creates a feast for the forest.

Seeing as Gro is sitting down, you’re allowed to climb on her legs but not higher than that.

Finding The Hidden Seeds

When arriving at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, in addition to the map of the gardens we were given a leaflet about the trolls and the seeds they were guarding. This leaflet included information about how to find the hidden seeds.

On each of the information boards by the trolls, it mentions a part of a tree that they teach you about. When writing that part of the tree down in the applicable spaces shown above, the shaded spaces will spell out a word that shares where the hidden seeds can be found.

I won’t spoil its location in this post, but you’ll want to scour the map for what this word describes. It’s a little further afield from the trolls, but it didn’t take too long to walk to the seeds.

We soon ended up in a clearing where the ten hidden seeds could be found in a ring. The seeds were metallic and mounted on to rocks.

There was an information board with details about each of the seeds and the trees that they become.

There was an employee here at the time and she shared some additional information about some of the seeds and trees. Two of the seeds – American chestnut and American elm can hardly be found in Maine.

Two further seeds – American beech and white ash – are endangered.

There are concerns about two further types of trees – red spruce and sugar maple – as the changing climate means that the growing conditions they need to thrive might not be around for much longer.

Here are the four remaining Hidden Seeds:

Other Parts Of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Although our focus was on finding the trolls and hidden seeds, we did spend some time enjoying the gardens themselves. Before setting off to find the trolls, we stopped by the dahlia garden based on the suggestion of the lady who’d sold us our tickets (who, coincidentally, we’d happened to meet while hiking up Mount Kineo a couple of weeks beforehand).

It wasn’t hard to see why she’d recommended that particular section of the gardens as there were dozens of different types of dahlias, all of which were beautiful.

While walking from Lilja to Birk, Shae somehow spotted a tiny fungus that looked like something out of a fairytale. I’ve since used Google Lens to try to identify it and it seems like it’s a Hare’s foot inkcap/coprinopsis.

Before looking for the last two trolls, we stopped by The Landing at the far side of one end of the park which has a jetty going out into the water.

After finding all the trolls but before going to search for the Hidden Seeds, we stopped for lunch next to a pond and waterfall which was a pretty place to have some food.

There were lots more parts of the gardens that we didn’t get to, including the Vayo Meditation Garden, Vernal Pool Trail and Children’s Garden. You could easily spend 5+ hours wandering the gardens if you wanted.

Guardians Of The Seeds Merchandise

Something we hadn’t seen in other places where we’ve visited trolls – but which is a great idea – is that the gift shop at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens has troll merchandise. That includes t-shirts, caps, ornaments and more.

We wanted to get some kind of memento. However, seeing as we travel full-time and have limited space for additional items, we wanted to get something that wouldn’t take up much space. Shae spotted some great postcards which we can create some kind of art with at the end of our 50 state road trip.

Final Thoughts

Any day where we get to see trolls built by Thomas Dambo is a good day and sure enough – our trip to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens was a good day! We all had a wonderful time checking out the trolls, exploring the gardens, stopping by the dahlia garden and more. If you find yourself along coastal Maine, we’d highly recommend stopping by the botanical gardens in Boothbay.

Address

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, 105 Botanical Gardens Dr, Boothbay, ME 04537