Thank You, Duke Gardens Annual Fund Supporters!

Thank you for supporting the Duke Gardens Annual Fund during the 2015-2016 fiscal year!  More than 1,800 alumni, parents, students and friends gave over $600,000 this past year, another record for us. Our Annual Fund’s steady growth over the years confirms that Duke Gardens is and will continue to be an integral part of the Duke experience.

As “your garden,” we continue to grow and thrive thanks to your generosity. Here are a few examples of how your Annual Fund support helped Duke Gardens give back:

       - Hosted more than 30 Duke events, including undergraduate classes, alumni events and concerts for students.

       - Connected with Duke & local communities through a series of free educational and member events.

       - Supported Durham families in need with almost 2,000 lbs. of fresh produce grown in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden and given to local charities for distribution.

       - Brought innovative educational adventures to Durham schoolchildren through our expanding outreach programs.

Each gift to Duke Gardens’ Annual Fund, no matter the size, makes an impact not only at Duke but also in the Durham community.  Duke Gardens is incredibly beautiful, and its inspirational landscape is part of what makes Duke unique.  Thank you for joining me in supporting the Sarah P. Duke Gardens Annual Fund and recognizing the many ways we add immeasurable depth and value to the Duke experience.

Bill LeFevre
Executive Director
Sarah P. Duke Gardens

Garden design: where to start?

By Lauren Sims
Photo by William Cullina

This spring, many of us will head to a local nursery or garden center and select a few new plants for our yards. Perhaps you are looking for a couple of containers to sit on the front porch, or maybe some brightly colored annuals to line the path to the door. This seems simple enough, right? But for a lot of people, “designing” a garden space is a completely different and more daunting endeavor.

“I think design is intimidating for most people,” says William Cullina, a gardening author and director of horticulture at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. “There’s a sense that there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to do it, and if you do it wrong it’s out there in your front yard and everybody is going to see it and you’ll be embarrassed.”

But Cullina is quick to point out that garden design does not have to be intimidating, and there is no such thing as right and wrong.

“In a sense, design is all about perception, right? It’s our perception of beauty.”

Some homeowners like the idea of a garden space that blends in with the natural landscape surrounding it, or one that suggests a landscape that they wish surrounded them, says Cullina, who counseled many Triangle gardeners back when he was nursery manager at Chapel Hill’s Niche Gardens. Others prefer a more abrupt design that sets the garden apart from its surroundings. Choose what you like, he says; no one aesthetic is better or worse than another.

One key to designing a garden space is to take the time to think abstractly, Cullina says. Right now, before that spring trip to the garden center, is the perfect time to play around with new ideas. Daydream about what you would like for and from your garden. Sketch out some ideas. Take digital photos of plants, or cut them out of a seed catalog, then lay them out and shuffle them around to see if and where you like them. And if you don’t like what you see, just grab a new piece of paper or snap a few more photos and experiment some more. No harm done.

The most important part of garden design is to enjoy yourself, says Cullina.

“Everybody has an opinion about what’s beautiful and everybody thinks that their opinion is the best one,” he says. “So I think you have to take it all with a grain of salt and have fun with it.”

You can learn more from Cullina when he visits Duke Gardens for two special events this month. On Feb. 12, from 9 a.m. to noon, he’ll lead a workshop called “Beyond the Surface: Soil Demystified.” Then from 3 to 5 p.m., he’ll present a talk titled “The Botany of Design.” For more information, please call 668-1707 or e-mail slsmith@duke.edu. To see Duke Gardens’ full roster of discovery programs, please go to gardens.duke.edu.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens is at 420 Anderson St.

Lauren Sims is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School and a work-study assistant at Duke Gardens. This column first appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun on Feb. 5, 2011.

Duke Gardens: Exploring Winter Botany

Article by Lauren Sims
Photos by Rick Fisher

For many, a walk through the woods to identify plants is an activity restricted to the spring and summer seasons. Plants, after all, are identified by their leaves—nature must be in bloom in order to learn about them. Right? Not so fast, says Ken Moore.

“Take a walk in the woods in the wintertime, and try and contrast it with a similar walk that you would make in the middle of the summer,” says Moore, the former assistant director of the N.C. Botanical Garden. “In the wintertime, you don’t have all those leaves on the trees. So you can really see the whole nature of the landscape. You can see the ups and downs, you see the beautiful architecture of the whole forest.”
A forest is lovely in the summer, Moore says. But despite the cool shade and the vibrant greens, “you can’t really see the forest because of the leaves. You’re so busy looking at the color of trees and flowers and the texture of ferns, you’re sort of unaware of the characteristics of individual plants.”

“With all the leaves gone, you’re forced to concentrate on other aspects of the plants,” he says. And, surprisingly, bare branches can actually be more clearly identifiable than foliage. According to Moore, leaves on the same plant may vary widely in their color, their size and even in their shape. In many cases, using them for identification purposes can be more confusing than helpful. More stable identifiers like bark and the configuration of buds at the ends of branches are often a surer bet, and they are showcased during the winter months.
Winter may appear to be a barren or uninteresting season for nature lovers, but do not be fooled. There is much to learn about your favorite plants this time of year. In fact, you may come to prize those winter nature walks even more than their summer counterparts.

“Most of us walk around in the winter saying, ‘I don’t know what any of these things are, I’ll have to wait until the leaves come out so I can tell you.’ My feeling is, ‘I can’t wait until the leaves all fall off, and then I can have the forest back!’ ”
To learn more about nature in winter, consider taking Moore’s “Winter Botany” 2-day class at Duke Gardens on Jan. 23 and 30 from 1 to 4 p.m. For information or to register, call 668-1707, e-mail the registrar or see page 12 of our full education brochure (PDF).
Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens is at 420 Anderson St.

Lauren Sims is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School and a work-study assistant at Duke Gardens. This article first appeared in The Herald-Sun on Jan. 15.

Duke Gardens summer intern report

One of my favorite waterlilies in the Virtue Peace Pond. You can vote for your favorite online in IWGS's international waterlily competition.

A Rotation in the Life of a Duke Gardens Summer Intern:
Rotation Two

Article & photos by Amanda Wilkins

Since I didn’t answer any of the questions I’d asked the other two interns last time, I am taking a moment in today’s post to share my thoughts and internship experiences.

Like I said before, I am a horticulture student at N.C. State University. I just finished my first year there, so I am the greenest intern this summer (no pun intended). However, I have lived around Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden most of my life, so I fell in love with botanical gardens.

When I was thinking about a career, horticulture made the most sense. I wanted to get more experience in a public garden setting, and Duke Gardens had a good reputation and was recommended to me by a friend at State. I was so excited to apply, and I couldn’t wait to get to work and learn more about plants. I couldn’t help myself when I considered I would be working in a garden every day and learning so much.

My first rotation at Duke Gardens was in the Doris Duke Center area. On my first day of work I was by myself, but it was complete heaven. I had never been more content weeding and watering in my life. Those were the majority of my duties, but I also checked the containers in the front and back every day, pruned, and moved plants around.

It hardly rained the entire time I was in the area, so I watered a lot. I really enjoyed working with horticulturist Tamara Kilbane in the water garden and learning about the aquatics. I worked with some great volunteers as well. The only negative experience the entire rotation was my battle with poison ivy that left me with rashes on both of my arms for a week. The poison ivy may have won the battle, but I won the war.

Tamara shows the interns Carolina fanwort (Cabomba caroliniana) in the greenhouses during an aquatic plant ID class.

This is our last week in our second rotation and I am finishing up at the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants. Working with Blomquist curator Stefan Bloodworth and horticulturist Katherine Wright has been great, and seeing the biodiversity of the Blomquist was refreshing. I really enjoyed working with the unique and endangered plants. I learned a lot. I have done a lot of different things this time around. I started out by sanding cedar branches, then I moved on to grooming paths and making labels. Some of my favorite activities were repotting plants and watering in the nursery. Yet again, my least favorite part of the whole experience was the second round with poison ivy. This time I ended up having to see a doctor because the rash began to make my arm swell. However, in my opinion, the poison ivy still lost.

I miss both areas already, but my next rotation will bring me to the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum. Sadly, I haven’t been able to walk around the Arboretum as much as I would like, but I do look forward to helping in the area. There are so many things going on in that area of the Gardens that I know I will always be busy. I especially look forward to learning about Asian design. Paul Jones, the arboretum’s curator, is very knowledgeable and has a passion for the Arboretum and its goals.

Finally, like all of the other interns, I have an internship project as well: writing some articles and blog posts about the Gardens. I hope you have enjoyed my posts. Look forward to more in the future!