New Hanover County Arboretum's public garden is unique
Those of us that visit, volunteer, and work at the New Hanover County Arboretum know what a special, dynamic place it is. Differing from the dozens of city and county parks, the Arboretum and Airlie Gardens are the county’s two public gardens designed to be educational resources for our community. One of the key components of the Arboretum’s education is to act as a plant library. We grow, showcase, and provide information on plants suited for our area. Most of our plants are labeled, and our trained Extension Master Gardeners staff a plant clinic on site weekdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., equipped to answer your horticulture questions.
Looking at improving your lawn? Visit our turf plots, which include examples of different lawn grasses common to the area. Walk through our native plant garden to see those pollinator-attracting plants at different seasons and view in person how they look in the landscape. In the herb garden you can see that rosemary when planted in well-drained soil will thrive here, but lavender often struggles. Visiting our bibliotheca of plants can help set reasonable expectations and save you a lot of disappointment.
This showcase of plant types and their growth habit sets the Arboretum apart from our local parks. Like when visiting a library, we want you to be respectful of other patrons as you learn. While our city and county parks are set up for physical recreation with running paths, sports courts, and wide-open spaces for games, the Arboretum is for engaging with nature. We ask that you stay on the marked paths as our beds often have sleeping plants in them, unseen until the conditions are right for them to pop up. We also ask that you keep your dogs on a leash and under your control at all times. Children are our favorite visitors, and we just renovated our children’s garden to reinvigorate that interactive space. Please supervisor your children as they play.
As in Airlie Gardens, we have art pieces installed throughout our garden. While some gardens have art that is intended to be interactive and physically engaged with, the pieces at the Arboretum are not for climbing and playing on. Please enjoy the works by artists including Dumay Gorham, Andy Cobb, Ken Ross and Dorothy Gillespie with your eyes, not hands and feet!
Please do come and visit this dynamic community asset our staff works so diligently to maintain. Enter the gates with respect for the posted rules and be considerate of other visitors and the space. Learn more about what plants grow well here, what wildlife they attract, enjoy the beauty of the plants, the interplay between art and nature, and learn how you can contribute to a sustainable community. But if you are looking for a place to play ball, race through the grass or climb on things, visit one of our amazing area parks instead.
New Hanover County Arboretum includes the therapeutic horticulture program, Ability Garden. Ability Garden offers a fundraising plant sale on the third Saturday of most months, and shopping with us increases our capacity to bring people and plants together.
Reach Heather Kelejian, director of the Ability Garden and the New Hanover County Extension Therapeutic Horticulture Agent at hlkeleji@ncsu.edu or 910-798-7660. The Arboretum grounds are free and open daily from 8 a.m.–5 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Visitors can enjoy the unique public gardens at the Arboretum
