Mizzou Botanic Garden celebrates its 25th birthday this week. Since its designation in 1999, the campus has been totally transformed, University of Missouri officials said.
University spokesperson Karlan Seville was a student before the creation of Mizzou Botanic Gardens on Aug. 26, 1999. She said the 1,252 acres of campus now under the garden’s eye used to host a random assortment of restaurants, apartments and bars.
In the past 25 years, that random assortment has become 18 specialty gardens, countless memorial benches and three tree trails. As a public campus, Mizzou Botanic Garden is now a free and open place to rest for all who walk it.
“I think that it’s wonderful that we’ve cleaned that up and purchased all of that space so that we could create the Botanical Garden and give people green space to get out and relax between classes or during lunch,” Seville said.
Plant-lovers can help commemorate the garden’s 25th anniversary Tuesday at MU’s Traditions Plaza from 2:30-4 p.m. The event was organized by donors and Friends of the Garden, a membership-based group made up mostly of retired MU faculty and staff.
Attendees can expect free ice cream and traditional fiddle music from professor emeritus Howard Marshall.
Maintaining the garden’s history
Barbara Uehling, MU’s first female chancellor, started the process by defining campus’ borders with a clear line in the 1980s. According to Seville, Uehling instructed the university to buy its surrounding buildings, and later led the charge to replace them with new learning halls and gardens.
“Campus really started to define itself as a beautiful place to visit,” Seville said.
Uehling’s vision finally came to life 12 years after her departure from the university when one of her successors, former Chancellor Richard Wallace, officially dedicated the campus as a certified botanic garden.
To maintain its status, Seville said the university must maintain labels and identification of its plants while providing educational information about the garden.
Seville said the beautification of campus is thanks to MU’s Landscape Services’ arborists, landscapers and groundskeepers who work in all conditions.
“We bring such beautiful, natural beauty to the campus,” Colleen Thomas said. She’s been a groundskeeper at the university for nearly 13 years and principally manages the flowers on campus.
“I try to always bring happiness and joy to work, because look what we’re doing,” she said, pointing to a perennial bed in Traditions Plaza. “I get to touch plants every day. It is great.”
Thomas emphasized the Botanic Garden’s diversity, pointing out that each specialty garden has a different theme — like a “bee” garden near Eccles Hall and a “woodland” one behind the Anheuser-Busch Natural Resources Building. She said students don’t always realize every aspect of the campus is carefully curated.
“We hear from admissions all the time that when students step foot on this campus, they feel a connection to the campus because it’s so pretty,” Seville said. “There’s a difference here at Mizzou than some of the other campuses that they visited.”
Seville said the anniversary celebration will honor the nearly 30 people who work for Landscape Services and hopes to raise awareness of the garden.
“We do put an effort into the green space on campus, as well as the buildings,” Seville said. “There’s a lot of thought and very dedicated staff who work in Landscape Services. And they really enjoy what they do.”
