The Atlanta Botanical Garden is a

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

located adjacent to

Piedmont Park Piedmont Park is an urban park in Atlanta, Georgia, located about northeast of Downtown, between the Midtown and Virginia Highland neighborhoods. Originally the land was owned by Dr. Benjamin Walker, who used it as his out-of-town gentleman's ...

Midtown Atlanta Midtown Atlanta, or Midtown, is a high-density commercial and residential neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The exact geographical extent of the area is ill-defined due to differing definitions used by the city, residents, and local business ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

, United States. Incorporated in 1976, the garden's mission is to "develop and maintain plant collections for the purposes of display, education, conservation, research and enjoyment."Atlanta Botanical Garden Website, Mission and History page
Atlantabg.org, Retrieved 2008-08-27

History

Atlanta Botanical Gardens welcome center

Following a petition by citizens of Atlanta in 1973, the garden was incorporated in 1976, as the private, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation ''Atlanta Botanical Garden Inc.''. The garden incorporated the pre-existing Dr. A. Leslie Stephens Memorial Bonsai Garden, now known as the Japanese Garden. Within a year Bill Warner, previously employed at

Holden Arboretum The Holden Arboretum, in Kirtland, Ohio, is one of the largest arboreta and botanical gardens in the United States, with more than , including devoted to collections and gardens. Diverse natural areas and ecologically sensitive habitats make up t ...

, was assigned office as the first executive director. He was soon followed by Ann L. Crammond in 1979. The following year marked a turning point in the history of the garden as a 50-year lease was negotiated with the city, securing the site of the Garden for years to come. A number of promotional activities started taking place, including social events, major art exhibitions and the annual Garden of Eden Ball. The Atlanta Botanical Garden welcomed its 50,000th visitor within a mere three years after the lease was arranged - this was even before any permanent structures had been erected. In 1985, the Atlanta Botanical Garden built its first permanent structure, the Gardenhouse. Expansions following this were The Children's Garden (1999), the Fuqua Conservatory in 1989, and the Fuqua Orchid Center which was added in 2002. Blockbuster summertime exhibitions began in 2003 with TREEmendous TREEhouses. Chihuly in the Garden opened in 2004, while in 2005 Locomotion in the Garden featured G-scale model trains. On April 29, 2006, an exhibition of the sculpture of

Niki de Saint Phalle Niki de Saint Phalle (; born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle; 29 October 193021 May 2002) was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monume ...

opened to the public. These huge

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

sculptures came to the Garden from France, Germany, and

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. In 2007, the exhibition was David Rogers' Big Bugs and Killer Plants, and 2008 is Sculpture in Motion, Art Choreographed by Nature, a display of moving, kinetic art. In 2009, the Garden hosted an exhibition of the monumental bronze sculptures of Henry Moore. The summers of 2010 and 2011 showcased the Garden's green expansion (see below), and in 2012, the Garden hosted Independent Visions, an exhibition of contemporary sculptures by nine artists. In 2013, the Garden will unveil Imaginary Worlds: Plants Larger than Life, made up of 19 mosaic culture sculptures. In 2016, Chihuly in the Garden open again with 19 installations throughout the Garden. In the winter the Garden has a holiday light show. "Garden Lights, Holiday Nights" began in 2011 featuring displays created with more than 1 million lights, most of them LED. The following year, the show grew to more than 1.5 million lights and attracted more than 160,000 visitors.

Chihuly in the Garden Exhibition

In 2004, the Atlanta Botanical Garden hosted an

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

Dale Chihuly Dale Chihuly () (born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is best known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture". Early life Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on September 20 ...

titled "Chihuly in the Garden". The exhibit ran through the end of October and was extended until December 31, 2004. During the eight-month run, an estimated 425,000 attendees visited the exhibit. The peak per-day rates of 7,500 were double the previous single-day attendance record at the Garden. Chihuly in the Garden returned to the Atlanta location on April 30, 2016 with 19 new installations. File:Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory - Atlanta Botanical Garden, Atlanta, GA.JPG, The Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory File:Atlanta Botanical Garden - orchid house.JPG, Orchid house File:Plant Tissue Culture Lab - Atlanta Botanical Garden.JPG, Plant tissue culture lab

Green Expansion Plan

The Green Expansion Plan was a large-scale expansion project that was completed in the spring of 2010 that doubled the size of the Garden while modernizing them at the same time. The expansion plan encompassed the construction of a number of new facilities, the most noticeable of which are the new visitor center and canopy walk. The plan was built around five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. By employing an array of energy-saving strategies with environmental sustainability considered throughout the project and recycling any trees removed as a result of construction, considerable efforts were made to make this expansion eco-friendly. A 100,000-gallon cistern was installed underground in December 2007 to aid in water conservation; the cistern fills with only an inch and a quarter of rain and waters about 40% of the new gardens. One striking feature of the new visitor center is the innovative green roof, with plants covering nearly 50% of the roof area. It provides natural cooling, sound insulation and additional garden area for visitors, and even a new wildlife habitat. The visitor center leads visitors to the canopy walk. The garden's old parking lot is now a beautiful Edible Garden featuring an outdoor kitchen; this new garden reconnects people with food and healthful eating. And the final aspect of the garden expansion plan is the conversion of its old entry drive to a large cascades garden filled with tropical plants and gently flowing waterfalls.

Canopy Walk

The Atlanta Botanical Garden is home to the Kendeda Canopy Walk, a skywalk that allows the visitors to tour one of the city's last remaining urban forests from around 40 feet in the air through the treetops of the Storza Woods. The skywalk extends from a bluff in the Garden into the branches of oaks, hickories and poplars. The structure also provides an aerial view of the

woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shrub ...

below.

The Canopy Walk was built for $55 million and opened in 2010. It was originally set to open in 2009, but during its construction in 2008, the skywalk collapsed, killing one worker and injuring 18 others. Because of the uniqueness of the Canopy Walk, city leaders believe it will become an icon for Atlanta.

Exhibits

The Botanical Garden is composed of a number of smaller themed gardens. Each contains different landscapes to display a variety of plants. Near the entrance are formal

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...

s, such as the

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

and the

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

garden. Two woodland areas, the Upper Woodland and the Storza Woods feature large trees and shade-loving flowers and undergrowth. The Children's Garden features whimsical sculptures, fountains, and interpretive exhibits on

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

, and

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient n ...

. The Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory contains indoor exhibits of plants from

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as ''lowland equatori ...

s and

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

s. The rain forest room of the Fuqua Conservatory is also populated by tropical

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

turtle Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked tu ...

s, and several exhibits of

poison dart frog Poison dart frog (also known as dart-poison frog, poison frog or formerly known as poison arrow frog) is the common name of a group of frogs in the family Dendrobatidae which are native to tropical Central and South America. These species are ...

s, the last of which is a collaboration in conservation efforts with Zoo Atlanta. Adjoining this building, the Fuqua Orchid Center contains separate rooms simulating the tropics and high elevations in order to house rare

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

s from around the world. The Fuqua Orchid Center is home to the largest collection of species orchids on permanent display in the U.S. and hosts a wintertime display known as Orchid Daze. Its unique Tropical High Elevation House provides the correct habitat for montane orchids and companion plants from around the equator at elevations of 6,000 to 10,000 feet. An Air Washer System, technology adapted from the textile industry, was combined with traditional greenhouse heating and cooling to create this environment and allows rare orchids to thrive. The Tropical Display House is filled with fragrant orchids from around the world.

References

External links

Atlanta Botanical Garden websiteAtlanta Botanical Garden
From About North Georgia {{Authority control Botanical gardens in Georgia (U.S. state) Parks in Atlanta Midtown Atlanta Urban forests in the United States Protected areas of Fulton County, Georgia Protected areas established in 1976 1976 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Woodland gardens