We found this venue on a top ten list of outdoor venues in MN and after touring it we knew it was going to be great!
The staff is really kind, extremely knowledgeable, responsive... and fun! Throughout the entire process from over a year out to the week before the wedding they kept in contact and had really helpful organizational forms, which kept our ducks in a row.
The venue space itself is really cool, there are several places on site that work as ceremony sites and then the large semi permanent tent with a patio/giant fireplace/pavilion bar/restrooms/assembly building/etc. The flow of the spaces around the patio area was superb and something we really looked for when we were touring venues. We wanted there to be different things for the guests to interact with all night but at previous weddings we attended the other venue designs didn't lend themselves to the guests interacting with all the fun things the couple put together. The Gardens is different though, literally from the start of cocktail hour until the last shuttle our guests were all over the grounds playing cornhole, giant crossword puzzles, trivia, bar games, photobooth, dancing, late night snacking on soft pretzels at the stone oven, making smores at the fireplace, and writing fun things in our guestbook. Our guests absolutely raved about the venue the whole night and we were told by everyone how awesome the site was; some people even went as far to say that they had "been to a ton of weddings and this is by far my favorite venue I have ever seen".
The nearest large hotels are in Lakeville 20min north of the Gardens of Castle Rock so we had a shuttle service take people back and forth and that worked splendidly.
We used a decent amount of vendors that the Gardens worked with regularly (We've Got It Covered, Liquid Motion Bar Services, Complete DJ, Complete Photobooth, and Opulent Events Planning) and they were all very good and knew the venue super well so they were proficient in their set up and tear down/communications with the venue staff.
I honestly can't say enough good things about this venue, we had absolutely no issues and everyone loved it.