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.
Join Kavanah Anderson, director of learning and community engagement at Duke Gardens, for a conversational stroll in the garden that deepens your relationship with plants. Swap plant stories, dig into horticultural history, question what you know and practice multisensory observation on a playful amble through the Gardens that delights and disrupts your understanding of what a garden can be. Expect to learn from each other, share what you know and leave with more questions than you started with.
Build your bird observation skills on a slow stroll through Duke Gardens with Liani Yirka, education program coordinator for Duke Gardens and experienced birder. If you have ever found yourself wondering about the birds that are flying or singing around you, join us to learn more together as a group. Bring your own binoculars if you have them (not required) and a sense of curiosity.
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.
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.
Join curator Paul Jones on a series of walking tours to learn how the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum has developed over the past 40 years from an overgrown woodland to the enchanting garden it is today. Experience the changing seasons as you hear stories about early landscaping ideas, plant collecting trips to China and Japan and the people and projects that shaped its early years of development. Each date will cover a different aspect of the Arboretum’s history. This first walk will include Dr. Culberson's original vision for the landscape and its early development. Join for one or more walks; register separately for each one: September 5, October 3 and November 7.
Tour the newly reimagined Carnivorous and Coastal Plain Plant Collection that features a variety of carnivorous plants native to North Carolina, including pitcher plants and Venus flytraps. Due to habitat loss, they are imperiled in their biologically rich native range just a few hours away from Duke Gardens. Join Maegan Luckett, horticulturist in the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, to meet these and other fascinating plants that grow in moist, nutrient-poor soils, such as pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens), several species of bog orchids and the delightful orange milkwort (Senega lutea), also known as “Bog Cheetos.” Learn about the importance of conservation efforts to preserve these North Carolina treasures.
Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as a strategy for Black self-determination. In his new book Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global South, Duke University professor Dr. Jarvis C. McInnis charts a new account of Black modernity by centering Tuskegee’s vision of agrarian worldmaking. He traces the diasporic ties and networks of exchange that linked Black communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Washington is often regarded as an accommodationist, McInnis shows how artists, intellectuals and political leaders—including George Washington Carver, Jean Price-Mars, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Marcus Garvey—adapted Tuskegee’s methods into dynamic strategies for liberation in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Jamaica. A local land and farm advocate will join Dr. McInnis to discuss the contemporary dynamics of this groundbreaking book. Copies will be available for purchase while supplies last, and a book signing will take place following the discussion.
