As we commemorate Duke’s Centennial, we reflect upon the passing of 100 years in a garden.
By Katherine Hale, Marketing and Communications Assistant
2024 marked the hundredth anniversary of Duke University’s founding, offering an opportunity to celebrate its many achievements and reflect on how far it has come as an institution. On a landscape level, however, whether a century counts as a long or short time depends entirely on how you look at it. In some ways, the land that is now Duke Gardens hasn’t changed at all since 1924. In other ways, it has undergone a series of swift and dramatic transformations.
On a geological level, where time is measured in millions, if not billions of years, 100 years barely registers. Mountains rise and fall, rocks form and erode away to nothing, and continents drift together and apart from each other on a scale so vast and slow, it’s almost incomprehensible to the human mind. Though scientists are able to track these motions and determine roughly why and when they happened, these estimates are far from exact—when dating fossils, for instance, paleontologists are delighted to pin a specimen down to within a few million years, give or take a few. From the perspective of the ancient and geologically stable bedrock beneath Duke Gardens, very little distinguishes 1924 from 2024; time has passed in the blink of an eye.
The next level is soil, the complex mixture of organic matter, minerals, air and water that supports life as we know it on earth’s surface. Depending on the environmental conditions, one inch of topsoil may take several centuries to accumulate, but that same quantity can also disappear in a few years if exposed to sufficiently heavy rains or frequent plowing and disturbances that promote rapid erosion. In 1924, much of the surrounding land in and around Duke University and Duke Gardens was worn-out farmland suffering from heavy topsoil loss. Although this loss has slowed over time as the forest gradually returned, much of this land was covered with impervious surfaces and developed into roads, buildings and houses, thus increasing the amount of runoff and soil erosion overall. Managing both of these issues has been a challenge for Duke Gardens from its beginning, when flooding from heavy rains on steep slopes destroyed the first planted beds in 1935. With a changing climate, it continues to be a major concern going forward.
When it comes to plants, a century can be a long or a short time depending on the species in question. Annuals are famous for only living for a single year, while perennials come back again and again, sometimes just for a few years, and sometimes for a century or more. The oldest trees in Duke Gardens that have been identified thus far are loblolly and shortleaf pines (Pinus taeda and P. echinata), some of which have been dated at 150 years or more, thus preceding the founding of Duke University, Duke Gardens and the city of Durham itself. And while the blackstem bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra ‘Bori’) in the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum dates back to the 1980s, its biological clock is set to a longer rhythm of approximately 120 years, dying back at roughly the appointed time no matter how long it’s been in residence on the property. Visitors to Duke Gardens were able to observe this rare and unusual botanical milestone last year, when the blackstem bamboo grove located near the lower parking lot bloomed for the first and only time in its life. Having spent all of its energy completely on blooming, the bamboo then died, leaving the area to be replanted anew.
The same is true for animals. Individual insects like butterflies and moths typically live for a single season, while birds, mammals and reptiles may live for two or more years depending on chance and circumstances. For humans, a century marks an enviable human lifespan. 2024 also marked the arrival of the 13-year periodical cicadas, which use the ebb and flow of sap in underground tree roots to determine when to emerge from the soil and mature en masse. As with plants, the last century has been a mixed bag, with many species of animals in decline, while others have flourished. Believe it or not, white-tailed deer were rare in eastern North America in 1924 but are now so numerous that Duke Gardens had to build a fence in 2020 specifically to keep them from devouring the plants at night.
Finally, we arrive at the final level of the landscape, encompassing the sky and everything in it. This, too, exists on multiple scales and with varying degrees of changes. The weather is whatever happens in the moment and is constantly in flux, while climate represents the overall trends and patterns of these events over time. Careful record keeping has made it clear that the climate of central North Carolina in 2024 is increasingly different than it was in 1924—wetter, hotter and more intense, prone to erratic fluctuations and unpredictable effects. This is one reason why, in 2023, Duke University established the Office of Climate and Sustainability, of which Duke Gardens is a part, to help it carry out the Duke Climate Commitment. As Duke moves forward into its next centennial, this impact-oriented initiative will lead the way in addressing the climate crisis by creating sustainable and equitable solutions that place society on the path toward a resilient, flourishing, carbon-neutral world and sustainable future for all.
Questions?
Please contact us at gardens@duke.edu.