University of Missouri Botanic Garden
MU Botanic Gardens, the product of a vision
Black Benches on Carnahan Quad
Black iron benches alleviated the carpenter bee problems that Landscape Services were tackling four years ago. When a bench is donated, a gold plaque is placed on the back to commemorate the donation.
Photo credit: Ana Stock
Ana Stock
MU Student
Visionary Barbara Uehling, who thought it was important to unify and beautify campus, was instrumental in the creation of the Mizzou Botanic Garden. The Columbia campus used to be separated by neighborhoods until the University purchased and built up the Carnahan Quadrangle. They placed a premium on green space Pete Millier, Director of Campus Facilities-Landscape Service and the Mizzou Botanic Garden said.
In their efforts to unify and beautify campus, Millier said MU purchased and built up portions of the community. After being built up and landscaped, the campus landscape was declared an internationally recognized botanic garden on August 26, 1999.
For the materials alone, the privately funded botanic garden costs approximately $25,000 per year to operate, Millier said. The university spends more on flowers than most, he said, but the botanic garden allows MU to attract money.
Programs like “Friends of the Garden” as well as alumni, friends, corporations and foundations all provide funds to preserve and support the gardens and also promote the MU educational mission, according to gardens.missouri.edu.
Millier said Landscape Services employs students as well as others to maintain the campus landscape, but students are their focus.
“The students serve as a constant reminder of why we do what we do,” Millier said. “It’s not just that you have good programs and you have a good time going to school here, it is also important for parents and visitors to see that we do care about our facilities and our students.”
According to a pamphlet produced by the University of Missouri Botanic Garden, MU boasts six of Missouri’s champion trees. To be deemed a champion tree, the species are judged based on height, crown spread and trunk circumference.
According to the Missouri Department of Conservation website, to be eligible to be champions, trees must be native or naturalized and to be given the title, they must be the largest of their species.
"With such prestigious plants, MU Landscape Services tries to use chemicals sparingly in the garden to protect the foliage, but chemicals are something that, with this year’s mild winter, have not been a problem.We use potassium and magnesium chloride products (to treat the sidewalks), but we are judicious of our use of it,” Millier said. “It is less harmful on the plants and environment, than sodium chloride, which is used on the roads, but we still try to use it judiciously.”
Typically when winter weather hits, MU landscape Services repots plants, like the large elephant ears outside of Memorial Union, and puts them in greenhouses to be winterized. With changing weather patterns this year and little need to winterize, Landscape Services has been working on the garden sooner, MU Agribusiness Management student April Kiehl said.
“Our climate this winter has been more of Arkansas and even farther south than that,” Kiehl said. “On campus they’ve planted flowers earlier.”
Kiehl said there are more insects this year because they didn’t die this winter, but Millier said Landscape Services practices integrated pest management so the garden is not hosed down with insecticides to combat the bugs. In the past he said there have been incidences that have required them to treat for insects, but they have since found solutions to the insect problem.
“Four years ago we started implementing the black iron benches across campus,” Millier said. “There used to be 100-120 wood benches that would attract carpenter bees and nobody wants to sit on a bee.”
Millier said that his office used to get tons of calls about bees bothering people, even though they would go out and spray the benches for bugs twice a year. Since the implementation of the black iron benches, however, the number of insect issues in the past four years has decreased. He said he believes that the implementation of the benches has also improved the appearance of the Mizzou Botanic Garden.
According to gardens.missouri.edu, people can donate black iron benches for $5,000. On each tribute bench, a plaque is placed on the back to commemorate the gift.
The garden is for the students, Millier said.
Trees can be adopted as a memorial
A gold plaque is placed below each tree that has been adopted on the MU campus. On Carnahan Quad, a yellow rose was laid on the memorial plaque of a young man whose fraternity brothers adopted a tree in memorial of him after his death.
Photo credit: Ana Stock