New Botanical Center opens in Springfield

(Originally published in "The Standard", news website of Missouri State University.)

By: Lauren Healey

Posted: 10/18/10

The new Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center is fueled almost entirely by volunteers.

Most of the maintenance on the gardens is done by Friends of the Garden, said Buck Keagy, a volunteer who said his main role in the Botanical Center is to be a "critter-getter."

"My main job entails catching butterflies outside the butterfly house and putting them in the butterfly house. I catch around 50 a week," Keagy said. "The only garden I maintain is the one directly west of the butterfly house. It's a 12-foot floral butterfly that I designed."

Keagy said the goal of the center and gardens is to educate people about nature; primarily plant life, how to grow plants, and what to do to take care of it.

"Most of these gardens have a code number that you can dial on your cell phone," he said. "A narrator will come on the line and tell you what you're looking at in more detail. This is free other than the minutes it uses on your phone."

The Friends of the Garden's mission is to establish and facilitate a Botanical Center, gardens and an arboretum at the site of the center to inspire the discovery, understanding and appreciation of nature.

"This facility works as an education/information/welcome center, but we can also have social experiences here," Coordinator Katie Steinhoff said. "It's a great space to have social and educational interaction."

The center, which had its grand opening Oct. 11-17, has a gift shop, meeting space, exhibit space, a kitchen and real bathrooms now, as opposed to porta-potties they had in the past, Steinhoff said. It will also house offices for the Springfield-Greene County Parks and Recreation, Friends of the Garden and a few other programs.

In addition to the new center, there are 24 botanical gardens, the Dr. Bill Roston Butterfly House, the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden, the Gray-Campbell Farmstead, Lake Drummond and walking trails, Steinhoff said. The center is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.

Steinhoff said there have been about 20 volunteer groups working on this project, but no one communicates with each other very well, so there has been some conflicts in planning events.

"Now that we've got a central place that we can all meet, planning and building things together will go more smoothly," she said. "There are a lot of great learning resources out here, but you'd have to know some basic things about gardening to be able to get started. Now that we've got a facility where there's staff out here nearly all the time, you can say, 'Hey I saw this plant out there. Can you tell me more about it?' and hopefully we can tell you more."

George Deatz, president of Friends of the Garden, said this project cost about $4.3 million from start to finish. The money came from Greene County sales taxes, grants and private donations. Access to the park's many attractions are free, except for the $3 fee for the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden.

"The stroll garden has a fee because much of the maintenance in that garden is done by paid Springfield-Greene County Parks Department staff," he said. "Nearly everything else is maintained through volunteer work. The stroll garden, butterfly house and farmstead are only open during the warm summer months, other than this grand opening week, because of cold weather."

The 12,700 square foot center is located on 114 acres at 2400 S. Scenic Ave. where Nathaneal Greene Park and Close Memorial Park meet. Steinhoff said the center is a community service program focusing on public education.

"Being a public service in a public park brings a whole new dimension to what the botanical gardens are all about and brings a whole new level of education and credibility to this park," she said. "We opened a couple of new playgrounds, including a metamorphoses butterfly sculpture that I helped design. What the parks department sees here is that we're actually leaders in a lot of these products. We're kind of a test site. We're trying to see how the kids use the equipment and what could be done differently next time."

Sam Paris, a visitor to the center, said that Nathaneal Greene and Close Memorial parks have always been his favorite outdoor space in town and has brought his two children to the park nearly every other day.

"This always has been our favorite park because it's just so pretty and relaxing and there's a lot of walking trails. My kids have wanted to come up here every day to see the progression of the park," he said. "They love the new playground areas, especially the metamorphosing butterfly."

The center has many operating plans for the future with revenue from the gift shop and rentals of the center, Steinhoff said.

"We've had requests to rent out the building for everything from bridal showers, weddings and 85th birthday requests," she said. "To rent the full meeting room costs $55 per hour and $220 for the whole day. Our meeting rooms are set up with Wi-Fi, projection equipment, TVs and DVD players so we can hold a lot of mini-conferences and things like that. There's a kitchen in there as well."

Steinhoff said a nutrition program is to be built in the future. At the last Springfield-Greene County Park Board meeting, an edible garden with an outdoor kitchen classroom was approved, so that's something she's trying to raise money for.

Steinhoff said the center can only grow from here.

"We're all about the community: local land, local people, local art. If we want to continue growing and improving this center and everything that goes with it, we're going to need lots of local volunteers and donations."