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The Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden
Dedication of Centennial Phase Butterfly and Bird Count Underway Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Donations enlarge botanical garden With state gift, work to begin on centennial garden. Public vies for peek at Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden LBJ Wildflower Center & Garden Ceremony marks initial event for Oklahoma Centennial Garden Trail Blazing and Plant Research
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More than 80 members and guests enjoyed a Garden membership benefit July 20 as they saw the seven-acre lake site and temporary visitor center before the lake fills and the building is open to the public. Many said they had not realized the magnitude of the future Garden until they saw the view from the deck of the building and hiked over the dam and along the shoreline. The lake, which will the crown jewel of the Garden, is 100’ deep at the dam.. Supporters cheer updates on Garden Click for Tulsa World Story 
Dedication of Centennial Phase
With Centennial wine, Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden supporters on April 30 toasted the dedication of the Garden’s Centennial Phase – a temporary visitor center, seven-acre lake, road and parking lot. Centennial Phase Project Team Inkind Goods and Services Butterfly and Bird Count Underway
The search for butterflies and birds at the Garden has begun. Dr. John Nelson, professor emeritus of biology at Oral Roberts University, and John Fisher were on the site last fall, and in April began monthly surveys to determine what butterfly species are present. The results will be in a visitor’s guide to the butterflies of the Garden. Nelson has been researching and documenting the distribution of butterflies and moths in Oklahoma for more than 35 years and is one of the authors of Butterflies of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Northern Texas. . On April 28th Nelson, Fisher, and Sandy Schwinn found 25 species, putting the number of species on the Garden list at 47. Because Tulsa and Osage County lists have 115 and 114 species respectively, finding close to 100 should be easy as the Garden nears completion. In addition, members of the Tulsa Audubon Society are compiling a bird list for the Garden. Each survey lasts 4-6 hours. If you would like to join Nelson, Fisher and Schwinn in their search, contact the Garden office at (918) 728-2707 or pearl@botanicalgardentulsa.org. Because construction is underway, we ask that no one go on site without an escort or permission. The bird list is at: The butterfly list is at: Eagle Scout candidate Conner Bizwell led members of Troop 8 March 15 in the massive project of removing broken limbs and trees that came down on the walking trails during a winter ice storm. The debris blocked 60 places on the two miles of paths.
The marked trails are accessible at Post Oak Lodge and Conference Center between lodges 1 and 3. We ask that you call the Garden office, 728-2707, to let us know when you plan to walk the trails and to ask for one of our pamphlet guides.
It also was St. Patrick’s Day and 80 volunteers from the Tulsa area delivered a shamrock plant to each lawmaker. Attached was a card asking for financial support of the Garden. In the Capitol rotunda, the volunteers set up exhibits with the Master Plan map, and pictures of construction, education and research projects, events from the past year, and several planned gardens.
Dick Wheatley, the Garden’s governmental community relations counselor, arranged for the group to be in the House of Representatives’ visitors gallery during the afternoon legislative session. When the volunteers were introduced, lawmakers stood and applauded them.
The Garden chartered two buses for the day, which was the first time most of the volunteers had been to the Capitol.
With bulldozer and tractor in the background, members of the board and Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor broke ground for the Garden Nov. 7. The first development is the Centennial Phase—a temporary visitor center, road, parking lot and 7-acre lake with island that later will host Oriental gardens. The Oklahoma Centennial Commemoration Commission and state Legislature awarded the Garden $1.8 million for the first phase. Construction will be completed in the spring 2008. Mayor Kathy Taylor commended the visionaries of the Garden “who understood that one of the assets Tulsa has is its beauty. “This is another great day in Tulsa. Most exciting to me is that it began with a vision and with hard work of state legislators, private citizens, partners in the Osage Nation, private industry, Osage County Commission and the City of Tulsa Public Works Department. “Tulsa will have a world-class Garden with educational institutions providing the opportunity where pre-school through adults can learn about conservation and how to keep our great city with the beauty it has. “The Garden will help Tulsa and northeastern Oklahoma to be a tourism point for this region and the country. It will increase the economic vitality of our city.” Donations enlarge botanical garden The Garden has been given an additional 25 acres by Persimmon Ridge LLC and its principals Gentner Drummond and Tom Atherton. The donation brings their donation to 240 acres. The additional acreage of forest and prairie will remain a conservation area through which hiking trails will be added. The new trails will pass towering rock boulders, cross clear-water streams and wind through prairies offering panoramic views of tree-covered ridges miles away.tionally known botanist led Garden Dr. Ron Tyrl, professor of botany and curator of the herbarium at Oklahoma State University, handed each hiker A Walk in the Woods, a guide Dr. Tyrl and Dr. Jay Walker created. It and plant sketches along the trail identify 48 of the plants along the nature trails. Dr. Tyrl also gave each member a magnifying class for inspection of plant details. The tour followed a entertaining and educational lecture on the botanical diversity of Oklahoma. Dr. Tyrl told the group that eastern and southeastern Oklahoma are the natural western boundaries for many eastern plant species. The program was the first of quarterly programs planned for Garden members. Members are welcome to self-guided walks along the two trails. One trail is a little less than one mile and the other a little more. Walking both trails takes about one hour. The trails begin at Post Oak Lodge.
With state gift, work to begin on centennial garden. By APRIL MARCISZEWSKI World Staff Writer The Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden will receive an extra $1 million from the Oklahoma Centennial Commemoration Commission, officials said Thursday. Public vies for peek at garden's new trail . By APRIL MARCISZEWSKI World Staff Writer Before Boy Scouts could get to their posts, five women clamored to be the first members of the public to take in the first finished segment of the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden. Farther up the trail, Adelle Stults pointed out a waist-high plant, still with mottled green leaves, and said, "The sumac's not very red yet." Boy Scouts Troop 1 Scoutmaster Michael Jones (right) gives directions to hikers Robert and Peggy Stottlemyre on the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden’s new trails. The couple have frequently checked on the progress of the trails, which have opened to the public. (JAMES GIBBARD / Tulsa World)
Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden By Dr. Richard Lupia Seeing is deceiving… or at least misleading. The land on which the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden soon will be built presents a serene, wooded landscape that we expect in this part of the state. But all of that greenery hides a tropical coast where rivers through a forest flowed into a shallow sea. Where you ask? If you cannot see that coast, you are perhaps looking up instead of down, beneath the soil, at the rocks on which the Garden will be built. About 300 million years ago—before the first flowers bloomed, before the first cycads and ginkgos grew, even before the first dinosaurs hatched—the land that is now Oklahoma was positioned just south of the equator, approximately where the Amazon River flows today. At this time, most of the continents were colliding to form a single mass of land geologists call “Pangaea” and the Earth was in the midst of a long, and massive, Ice Age. As a result of its location near the equator and a climate influenced by a mile-plus thick ice sheet at the South Pole, Oklahoma was covered in turn by a tropical sea and expansive tropical forests as the southern glaciers advanced and retreated. Rivers flowing out of the then very young Ozark Mountains carried muds and sands to form large deltas extending into the sea. The forests, deltas and sea teemed with all kinds of life. Dr. Steve Westrop, an invertebrate paleontologist, and I, a paleobotanist, hope to work with students and use any new exposures to document events that occurred on the local landscape of the Garden. We are particularly interested in collecting, identifying, and documenting changes in the number of different plant and animal species that inhabited the shallow sea and coastal forests around the delta and along the coast. What will we find? We do not know yet, well not exactly, and that’s the exciting part. The rocks in the area where the Garden will be built belong to a set of rock units collectively known to geologists as the Skiatook Group and are assigned to an interval of time known as the Carboniferous Period (specifically late in the period, about 305-306.5 million years ago). As you might expect from the name, the Carboniferous is known for containing abundant coal deposits. Coals represent peat swamps in which decaying plant debris survives to become the combustible rock. Plant fossils often are found above, below, and within the coals. The Skiatook Group also contains sediments deposited in the marine waters around the delta, as well as limestones (including one named the Hogshooter Limestone) representing flooding events when sealevel rose. Locally, these marine deposits are known to contain fossil shells and burrows of the animals that inhabited that sea. In any event, it is the search for these fossils and answers to our questions about the local habitats as they appeared 305 million years ago that intrigue us. We are pleased to have been invited to work with the staff of the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden to uncover its deep past as all of us look forward to its successful and exciting future. LBJ Wildflower Center & Garden may become partners The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the Botanical Garden may become a team. Officials with the Center and Garden met in Tulsa in June to explore ways the two can work together. Ideas are for the Center to be a resource for site and garden design and for the two to be resource partners on Oklahoma native plants. Center leaders invited the Garden to participate in a world Seed Bank, which stores seeds for planting in case species are destroyed or become endangered; they also offered to train Garden volunteers in seed identification and collection. Susan Rieff, executive director of the Center, and Deacon Turner, a Tulsan who is the chairman-elect of the Center’s advisory council, gave the Garden staff and board a lot of ideas as well as a guideline on mistakes to avoid. The Center conducts research and serves as consultants on using native landscapes as a way to address environmental issues, endangered species, landscape maintenance, and global warming. The Garden’s executive director, Pat Woodrum, said the staff and board are very honored that the Center is interested in helping develop a world-class botanical garden. “We feel they can help us have the very best botanical garden and landscape.” The Wildflower Center, which was founded in 1982 by Lady Bird Johnson and friend Helen Hayes, has 279 acres and a $4 million budget. It has 15 acres of gardens with 650 Texas native plant species. It became part of the University of Texas in the fall of 2006 and gained access to research, donors, alumni, networks and work-study students. Happy Trails to You Most botanical gardens are created as an outgrowth of an established garden, be it that of an academic institution, private garden or estate, or public park. The Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden is remarkable in that it is being created at on virgin land -- a site found after an exhaustive search of the greater Tulsa area for an ideal place for a botanical garden. CLICK for full story Tribal Blessing Ceremony marks initial event for Oklahoma Centennial GardenOn a tiny island in a pond, Osage Indians conveyed with prayer, dance and song the peace and meditation that one day may be characteristic of the Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden. On Monday, in the garden's first public event, Assistant Osage Nation Principal Chief John D. Red Eagle asked God to bless the land and to guide developers. Cedar smoke rose out of a black pan on the island and skimmed across the grass in the breeze as part of the blessing. CLICK for full story This mature grove of more than 100 Persimmon trees has been designated an official Centennial Grove commemorating the first 100 years of statehood. The “Mother Trees” in the grove are estimated to be 75 years old. Trail Blazing and Plant Research Two woodlands and prairie walking trails charted by three botanists and an engineer have been been opened at the Garden. Both paths wind through ancient forests. The longer trail showcases majestic views of the Osage Hills. Volunteering for the project have been botanists Dr. Bruce Hoagland of the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Ronald J. Tyrl of Oklahoma State University and Dr. Jay Walker of Sapulpa as well as Gene Phillips of Wallace and Wallace Engineering in Tulsa. Walker worked with Troop 1 Boy Scouts to clear the trails. He and Tyrl prepared a booklet that identifies 48 trees, shrubs, vines and wildflowers along the routes. Markers help the public learn about the plants. Hoagland, coordinator of the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory, and Amy Buthod, a botanical specialist for the Oklahoma Biological Survey and collections manager for the Robert Bebb Herbarium, are collecting and inventorying plants. Hoagland estimates there are more than 400 species on the Garden site. Some believe the oldest trees have been growing for 400 years. Hoagland and Buthod will file one specimen of each plant collected at OU’s Bebb Herbarium, and provide the Garden with a laminated set. The University of Oklahoma and University of Tulsa have joined Oklahoma State University, Tulsa Community College and Tulsa Technology Center as educational partners with the Garden. They will provide support and assist will various programs as the Garden develops. Carrie Vesely Henderson is applying her fund-raising expertise to developing Tulsa’s $40 million Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden. As development director, she is planning, organizing, coordinating and implementing fund-raising. Carrie has nine years of experience as director of development, individual giving and special events at the Tulsa Opera. Her background includes direct mail and database marketing for Harte-Hanks Company in Kansas City and membership campaigns for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. She has a bachelor’s degree of business administration in marketing and advertising with emphasis in art history from the University of Oklahoma and a Master of Arts degree in arts administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. |
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The Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden/Research and Education Center HOME | HISTORY | BOARD | SUPPORT | DIRECTIONS-MAP| NEWS & EVENTS |
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Samson provided hardhats, a chain saw and a powered limb saw; Cowen Construction provided two chain saws, hardhats and fuel for the saws, and Steve Miller with Orion Exploration arranged to have several saws tuned up and sharpened and provided a chain saw as well. 
One of the visitors was Blake Wade, executive director of the Oklahoma Centennial Commemoration Commission. The agency has awarded the Garden more than $2 million for operations and its Centennial Phase – a seven-acre lake, temporary visitor center, parking lot and road.
Many of the supporters met individually with their state senator and representative and urged them to support funding for the Garden’s Phase 1, which will be the permanent visitor center, other buildings and many of the planned 15 major theme gardens.
Oklahoma ranks only behind California and Texas in the number of native plant varieties in the United States. The botanical diversity is due to the state’s varied temperatures, rainfall, and geology, he said. 
