History

From our earliest beginnings to pivotal transformations over time,  Sarah P. Duke Gardens has an intriguing history shaped by important moments and people, and the natural world around us.   

What is now Duke Gardens was originally the territory of several Native nations, including Tutelo (TOO-tee-lo) and Saponi (suh-POE-nee) -speaking peoples. Many of their communities were displaced or killed through war, disease and colonial expansion. Today, the Triangle is surrounded by contemporary Native nations, the descendants of Tutelo, Saponi and other Indigenous peoples who survived early colonization. These nations include the Haliwa-Saponi (HALL-i-wa suh-POE-nee), Sappony (suh-POE-nee), and Occaneechi (oh-kuh-NEE-chee) Band of Saponi. North Carolina’s Research Triangle is also home to a thriving urban Native American community who represent Native nations from across the United States. Together, these Indigenous nations and communities contribute to North Carolina’s ranking as the state with the largest Native American population east of Oklahoma.

Indigenous Peoples have and continue to nurture and celebrate this land in ways that provide home, shelter, and sustenance in harmony with the plants and animals also living here. The Piedmont Prairie in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, for example, displays the grassland ecosystem that once covered a substantial part of the U.S. southeastern Piedmont region, from New Jersey to central Alabama. These southern grasslands were formed not only through grazing but also with fire, which could burn extensively and clear vegetation from large tracts of ground. Palatable grasses and wild flowers would regrow, attracting the bison. Over hundreds if not thousands of years, the grassland ecosystem evolved. A significant proportion of fires were started and controlled by the Indigenous population. Learn more about, and connect with, Indigenous Peoples of the Southeast.

The idea of a public garden on Duke University’s campus arose in the early 1930s, due to the vision and enthusiasm of Dr. Frederic M. Hanes, an early member of the original faculty of Duke Medical School. Dr. Hanes deeply loved gardening and was determined to convert the debris-filled ravine, by which he walked daily, into a garden of his favorite flower, the iris. In the previous decade, the land had been under consideration for creation of a lake. But funds were short and that project was abandoned. So the idea for a garden took root.

Dr. Hanes persuaded his friend Sarah P. Duke, widow of one of the university’s founders, Benjamin N. Duke, to give $20,000 to finance a garden that would bear her name. You may read her letter of approval below.

In 1935, more than 100 flower beds were in glorious bloom in the area that is now the South Lawn. They included 40,000 irises, 25,000 daffodils, 10,000 small bulbs, and assorted annuals. Alas, heavy summer rains and the flooding stream caused washouts and disease, including iris rot.

By the time Sarah P. Duke died in 1936, the original gardens were in decline. Dr. Hanes convinced her daughter, Mary Duke Biddle, to construct a new garden on higher ground, as a fitting memorial to her mother. 

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950), a pioneer in American landscape design, was selected to design the plans for both the construction and the plantings for the new gardens.

Largely self-taught, Shipman became a landscape architect at the encouragement of architect Charles Platt, who lived near her home in Upstate New York and admired her keen eye for garden design. Platt encouraged her to pursue landscape design for private homes, going so far as to arrange for a designer in his firm to tutor Shipman in drafting.

By 1920, having secured a number of clients through her connections, Shipman opened her own landscape design firm in New York City. Not surprisingly, firms at the time did not hire women as designers. If she wanted to work professionally, she had to do so on her own. Shipman shunned convention – and moved the dial in the world of design – by only hiring women to work with her.

Most of Shipman’s designs were for private estate gardens, by some estimations more than 650 estates across the country. It was through her work with Ralph and Dewitt Hanes in Winston-Salem that she first met Dr. Frederic Hanes, Ralph’s brother.  In the late 1930s, after the devastating floods at the original Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Hanes invited Shipman to visit the site and suggest a solution for the flooding problem.

Shipman developed a plan for a hillside terraced garden that was defined by strong axial lines, dovecotes and lush beds filled with roses and trees, reminiscent of English border gardens. Sensory elements abounded, such as flowing water features, classical statuary and secluded resting spots.  Shipman employed Elizabeth Strang, one of her colleagues, to draft the plans for the garden, leaving Strang to design many of the non-floral features such as the Pergola.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens was dedicated in April 1939 (see archival footage from the dedication here). We celebrated the 75th anniversary of that dedication in 2014.

Duke Gardens is considered Shipman’s greatest work and a national architectural treasure. Most of the approximately 650 other gardens she designed have long since disappeared. Learn more about Ellen Biddle Shipman and other pioneering women who have shaped Duke Gardens.

Since the 1939 dedication, Sarah P. Duke Gardens has developed dramatically and beautifully. In 1968, the rolling woodland terrain of the 6.5-acre H.L. Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, named in honor of Professor Hugo L. Blomquist, the first chair of Duke University’s Department of Botany and an authority on Southeastern flora, was dedicated. the Blomquist is filled with more than 900 species and varieties of regional native plants.  Many of them found a home in this garden after approved plant-rescue operations from land facing development. 

Faced with storm-water challenges in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Duke Gardens developed the William L. Culberson Asiatic Arboretum, designed by award-winning landscape architect Linda Jewell, partner at the firm Reynolds and Jewell in Raleigh (and designer of Cary’s Booth Amphitheatre, among other projects). Jewell worked closely with engineers to design an attractive a 1.5-acre pond that would become the center of the Asiatic Arboretum and guide its overall mandate to showcase biodiverse plant species with Asian origins. In 1981, Jewell won a special recognition award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for her work at Duke Gardens.

Today, Duke Gardens features four distinct areas: the original Terraces and their immediate surroundings, known as the Historic Gardens, including the Mary Duke Biddle Rose Garden and historic Roney Fountain; the H.L. Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, a representation of the flora of the Southeastern United States; the W.L. Culberson Asiatic Arboretum, devoted to plants of eastern Asia; and the Doris Duke Center Gardens, including the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden.

We hope you enjoy seeing the world-class botanic garden that has blossomed at this world-class university through the decades.

Questions about the history of Duke Gardens?

Please contact us at gardens@duke.edu.