Each spring at Quarryhill Botanical Garden is a lush display, as the largest collection of wild-sourced Asian plants found in the Sonoma Valley blooms throughout the 25-acre space.

This year, six months after wildfires tore through the region, yet inexplicably spared the gardens, the season’s bloom is a poignant symbol of the North Bay’s regrowth.

“It’s an incredible spring already,” says Quarryhill executive director William McNamara. “The garden has really come into its own.”

Located northeast of Glen Ellen in the Mayacamas foothills, Quarryhill was founded in 1987 by landowner Jane Davenport Jansen. McNamara was a landscape contractor at the time, and says he was in the right place at the right time to help develop the garden. He also began leading expeditions to remote locations in Japan, China and throughout Asia to collect seeds to populate the garden.

Aside from offering an outdoor oasis of natural beauty, Quarryhill is also a beacon of conservation and education in the North Bay. Each year, thousands of students get basic botany and garden lessons during half-day educational tours of the garden.

All that work was feared lost last October, as the Nuns fire decimated the Sonoma Valley. McNamara was out of town when the fire began, and was told the garden, and his home on the property, were likely gone.

“The garden somehow was miraculously spared,” he says. “It came to our fence line, and then the fire stopped. We’re not quite sure why.”

McNamara speculates that the garden’s irrigation could have been a factor, and he knows firefighters were at his home from captured security camera footage, but he’s still shocked that the garden survived.

“We feel lucky, but it’s hard to feel too lucky when so many people lost everything,” he says. “We were one of the fortunate ones.”

After the initial cleanup, Quarryhill welcomed residents to the garden admission-free through the end of 2017, as a gesture to the community, “to have a place they could come to for solace after such a tragedy,” says McNamara.

This weekend, Quarryhill offers another chance for the community to see the gardens at an Earth Day celebration and plant sale on April 21. Activities will include arts and crafts, live dance and music performances, exhibits and more.

“We tend to only look at things for their utilitarian value, but plants have intrinsic value,” says McNamara. “I want people to see that and appreciate that plants are valuable in their own right.”

It had been years since I’d last jumped on a trampoline, but a few minutes of hopping around and that youthful joy quickly came back. And there was so much to jump on, too—an area with basketball hoops and trampolines where you can slam-dunk foam balls to your heart’s content, trampolines on the walls, a crash pad to jump into and a foam pit you could just flop into. I was afraid the half-hour alloted to me would be too little, but by the end I was exhausted—and exhilarated.

But I wasn’t done. After all, I may have had my fill of the Rockin’ Jump Trampoline Park, but I still had the Game On Arcade to check out. And after that, a bite to eat at the Victory House Sports Bar & Restaurant. Then maybe get a little bowling in at the 7ten Social Upscale Bowling & Lounge. They’re all a stone’s throw away from each other at the Epicenter in Santa Rosa.

The Epicenter has been here for a year and a half, and already is a premier staycation spot. Functioning as a cross between a theme park and a mall, it offers a selection of attractions ranging from arcades to sports games under one roof.

On one hand, this means visitors don’t need to pay up front; anyone can enter the center and wander around and, say, watch someone play on the indoor soccer fields. On the other, it means that each attraction costs money. If you want to play some lazer tag and then go bowling, you have to pay separately for each, which can get pricey.

Much of the center’s focus is on sports. The bowling lanes and trampoline park are complemented with a fully established gym—members only, unfortunately—and martial arts classes for the kids. Massive TV screens dominate nearly every location, almost all of which feature an ongoing game.

I recommend going during the work week. Epicenter raises the prices on weekends by a few dollars to get that extra cash from the larger crowds. For adults seeking entertainment, try heading there in the middle of the day or later at night, to avoid throngs of kids and teenagers who just got out of school. There’s plenty of time to visit. Epicenter opens at 10am and closes at midnight. visitepicenter.com.—Alex T. Randolph