
GWA Symposium 2009
Raleigh, NC
September 24-26th
Our Annual
Symposiums are really a run for the money so to speak…there is so much
packed into these events that is good and you want to see it all so you run,
run, run. Always a great time, a time to network and meet new people, a time
to connect to old friends, good speakers and topics, good food and don’t
forget the gardens!! I won’t tell you about all the meetings, I will just
tell you about the gardens we visited.
September 24th, 2009
Gracing the campus of Duke University is the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, often
spoken of as the “Crown Jewel of Duke University.” Recognized as one of the
premier public gardens in the United States and renowned both for landscape
design and the quality of horticulture, this 55-acre garden attracts more
than 300,000 visitors from all over the world each year. Within the gardens
are the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, the photogenic Culberson Asiatic
Arboretum, and the splendid formal terraces, the site of hundreds of
weddings (and even more proposals) on campus. The gardens are a memorial to
Sarah P. Duke, wife of Benjamin N. Duke, one of Duke University's
benefactors.
In the early 1920s, Duke University's planners intended to turn the area
where the Sarah P. Duke Gardens are currently located into a lake. Funds for
this project ran short and the idea was subsequently abandoned. The gardens
then officially began in the 1930s, when Dr. Frederick M. Hanes, a faculty
member at the Duke Medical School, persuaded Sarah P. Duke to give $20,000
to finance the planting of flowers in the debris-filled ravine. By 1935,
over 100 flower beds consisting of 40,000 irises, 25,000 daffodils, 10,000
small bulbs and assorted annuals graced the lawns. Unfortunately, the heavy
rains of that summer and the flooding stream completely washed away the
original gardens. By the time Sarah. P. Duke died in 1936, the gardens were
completely destroyed. Dr. Hanes was able to convince Sarah Duke's daughter,
Mary Duke Biddle, to finance a new garden on higher ground as a memorial to
her mother. Ellen Biddle Shipman, a pioneer in American landscape design,
was chosen to create the new gardens. They are considered by many to be her
greatest work.
http://www.hr.duke.edu/dukegardens/
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