Curious Garden

The story

When mother-son antique dealers Terry and Jason Cohen opened this spot on Garland Road in late 2015, the plan was simple enough: an overflow venue for garden furniture, vintage ironwork, and custom bottle trees that wouldn't fit inside their crowded Lakewood flagship, Curiosities. But over time, the outdoor statuary quieted down and something stranger took root. The metal planters made way for glass display cases, and the inventory slowly migrated toward pure natural history.

What stands today is a quiet, dense wonder cabinet sitting right across from the Dallas Arboretum—and frankly, it is the far deeper cut of the two. Instead of manicured flowerbeds, you get dark wooden shelves crammed with animal skulls, polished minerals, fossilized bones, framed insects, lab prints, and vintage scientific instruments. It feels less like an antique shop and more like a private 19th-century naturalist’s study tucked into an East Dallas strip storefront.

Because the collection leans so hard into raw taxonomy and specimens rather than garden-variety retro kitsch, you aren't sifting through modern reproductions. The inventory turns over constantly—one visit might yield vertebrae and wet specimens, the next framed butterflies or taxidermy. It is the kind of place where you can quietly pick up a shared relationship totem or a strange desktop skull without having to answer awkward questions about where you found it.