Greening up the Garden

Frank Harmon's beautiful design for the North Carolina Botanical Garden's new visitor education center, slated to be the first Platinum LEED building in the southeast, is coming to life! Director Peter White took Tucker and me, along with Laura Moore (a neighbor and member of the Community Design Commission), on a fascinating hard hat tour today. This generously proportioned, green, and welcoming facility will have a transformative impact on the way the Garden is experienced.

On Capitol Hill, a patch of Chapel Hill

The United States Botanic Garden, near the Capitol building and near the hotel where I just was for a conference, has a display going on called "Celebrating America's Public Gardens." A total of 20 gardens are featured, 12 of them with outdoor displays. After hours, as dark was falling, Paul showed me what he had discovered by accident earlier in his wanderings: the North Carolina Botanical Garden's outdoor display featuring its signature carnivorous plants, longleaf pines, and other native plants of eastern North Carolina.



Here's the NCBG's story, with pictures, about the building of the boardwalk, etc. to create the garden exhibit. "Celebrating America's Public Gardens" extends through October 8.

"Honoring the earth" at the N.C. Botanical Garden

A Carolina blue sky fell generously on the North Carolina Botanical Garden yesterday at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Visitor Education Center. Long in the making, this building, designed by Frank Harmon, promises to be the state's first Platinum LEED-certified building.



One of the major investors in this landmark project is the UNC student body. They are contributing $210,000 toward construction of the center's geothermal well system.

Introduced by Chancellor James Moeser, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue gave the dedicatory address. She was followed by Peter White, director of the Garden.

Peter regularly bikes to work. Some of us had never seen him in a suit. So it didn't seem all that strange to notice, as he talked, a tent caterpillar crawling up his neatly pressed left pant leg. Then on to the jacket, then disappearing under the arm for a time, to emerge on the upper arm. On to the shoulder, lifting its head up like a periscope, then back down the arm a bit, then up and--would it happen?--yes! on to the collar of Peter's nice blue shirt, headed for paydirt. At which time comes Lily, daughter of Carol Ann McCormick, assistant curator of the Herbarium, to coax the critter away with a billcap. It was a proud moment of animal rescue--either way you look at it.