We need your help with pollinator research! We want to know if people and pollinators prefer the same garden styles. Join Maegan Luckett, horticulturist in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, for a tour of our parking lot pollinator garden plot between 10 a.m. and noon and take a 3-minute survey. Your feedback is invaluable as we learn more about pollinator preferences. This is a drop-in opportunity. No registration required.
Stay connected to the most recent garden updates and seasonal highlights by learning directly from Duke Gardens staff on a casual stroll. While construction for the transformative Garden Gateway Project is underway, enjoy special access on this monthly walk. Use your members' free code or become a member today! Visit the Pocket Prairie, a special project in a parking lot adjacent to Duke Gardens and learn about the pollinator research underway there.
Join Dr. Neeti Bathala for an engaging lecture on the vital role of pollinators in sustaining ecosystems and food production. Discover native plants and flowers that attract and nourish a variety of pollinator species and gain practical insights into designing year-round blooming gardens—even in small spaces or containers. Participants will also learn how to take actionable steps for conservation and participate in citizen science by reporting pollinator observations.
Did you know a prairie can grow in a parking lot? Southeastern native prairie plants can be an attractive, low maintenance alternative to sod in underutilized urban areas such as parking lots. Additionally, unlike sod, these pocket prairies can also be beneficial to pollinators such as birds and butterflies. Visit a Duke Gardens pocket prairie project in a nearby parking lot for a show-and-tell demonstration of the way the ecological benefits of prairies can coexist with a built environment. You’ll leave with a plant list and an appreciation for the power of prairie plants.
Join us for a timely webinar about Ukrainian botanical gardens and their critical role during the ongoing war with Russia. Since the Russian invasion in early 2022, Ukraine’s botanical gardens have been serving as centers of respite, recovery, environmental education, and nature healing. Leaders from several Ukrainian gardens will describe their current focus on Therapeutic Horticulture, utilizing US expertise provided primarily by North Carolina Botanical Garden to assist the traumatized population of their country, including veterans and displaced families. Ukrainian botanical garden leaders will provide vivid images of their gardens and their work and will discuss the crucial support from US partners. The webinar will conclude with a question-and-answer session and will explain how you can assist these efforts.
NEW DATE. Spend your lunch hour getting to know some of the best go-to plants for building ecologically sound landscapes. In the Native Plant Solutions series, we take a deep dive into a handful of specific native plants, focusing on a landscape situation or plant adaptation that makes them particularly helpful. This session explores a group of plants whose survival strategies give them an edge when there’s open space. Uncovered ground in a landscape is an invitation for something to grow there. Often, what grows is a plant we don’t want (i.e., a weed). Gaps show up in new plantings before the plants have matured and in established plantings when they are disturbed. In this session, we’ll focus on dynamic fillers—desirable species that can be used to close those gaps, fill any new ones that arise, and provide seasonal color. Learn how to use these plants to reduce the need for weeding and mulching, and to create beautiful, resilient, lower-maintenance plantings.
We need your help with pollinator research! We want to know if people and pollinators prefer the same garden styles. Join Maegan Luckett, horticulturist in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, for a tour of our parking lot pollinator garden plot between 10 a.m. and noon and take a 3-minute survey. Your feedback is invaluable as we learn more about pollinator preferences. This is a drop-in opportunity. No registration required.
Join horticulture staff and volunteers on a walk around the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants to learn about connections between people, plants and place. Each month will feature a different seasonal topic related to gardening with native plants.
Bitters have been used for centuries as aperitifs or digestifs (think Cynar or Campari) and classic bitters such as Angostura are often dashed into our cocktails. Because our bodies co-evolved with wild bitter foods, the bitter flavor is also very important to our health. In this interactive workshop, learn from clinical herbalist Kelly Owensby of West of the Moon about the history of bitters and the fascinating health impact of bitter herbs in our body. Participants will experiment with 29 different herbal flavor profiles, learn the impact of different herbs and take home a custom crafted herbal bitters tincture to spritz into bubbly water as a summer survival strategy.
Late summer is peak time for beautiful produce in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden. Join horticulture staff on a walk to delight your senses and boost your gardening skills. Learn how this garden area is maintained by prioritizing sustainability and using different methods for growing edible plants while also supporting native wildlife.
Piedmont prairies are grassland ecosystems that once covered a substantial part of the rolling landscape of the Piedmont region that stretches from New Jersey to central Alabama, covering an area of approximately 80,000 square miles. This ecosystem, maintained through grazing and the controlled use of fire by the many Indigenous groups, began to vanish with the arrival of Europeans. Join Blomquist Garden of Native Plants curator Annabel Renwick to learn how widespread conservation efforts are now recognizing Indigenous wisdom in maintaining this ecosystem and how Annabel has rebuilt this prairie landscape at Duke Gardens with native ecotype wildflowers and grasses.