Camp Registration Begins

the property.

1987: In response to flaring tensions between the arboretum and residents who live around White Rock Lake, East Dallas Councilman Craig Holcomb appoints a task force to find a resolution.

The 1984 master plan is toned down with a revised master plan that contains fewer buildings, more native plants and a lower price tag.

1988: City council approves the arboretum’s Planned Development District 287 and the society’s 15-year master plan. Longtime Dallas Morning News architecture critic David Dillon calls the new plan “simpler, clearer and more reasonable” than the previous version, “which was so overdesigned that it would have sent the Arboretum sliding into White Rock Lake under the weight of its own architecture.”

Perot demands the return of the $2 million donated for expansion of the Dallas Arboretum, then later withdraws his demand, but says he won’t give the additional $6 million he pledged for the project.

1989: The society opens its first designed garden, the Lay Ornamental Garden, funded by a $1.7 million gift from Amelia (Mimi) Lay Hodges, in memory of her late husband, Herman Lay, co-founder and chairman of the board of Frito-Lay Inc. “Mimi’s Garden,” as it became known, was the first of 17 new gardens proposed in the arboretum’s 1987 master plan.

1992: The arboretum proposes to build a 6-foot-high 1,000-foot-long stucco wall with $500,000 in both private and public funds to shield the gardens from Garland Road traffic noise. Neighbors oppose, claiming that the wall would bounce noise into their neighborhoods, block views of the gardens from Garland Road, and would give the publicly funded arboretum “an exclusive, country club atmosphere.” The arboretum forgoes the wall and instead agrees to build a metal fence lined with shrubs.

1994: Roger Clinton, brother of President Bill Clinton, is married at the arboretum, which by now hosts more than 100 weddings a year.

1996: Robert L. “Bob” Thornton III, grandson of former Dallas Mayor R.L. Thornton, becomes chairman of the society board the same year his cousin, Mary Brinegar, another of the mayor’s grandchildren, is hired as arboretum and the Trinity River area, among others. But when the DeGolyer estate became an option, with its already established gardens and mature trees, the society seized on it.

Stahl called the land “a priceless treasure to share with many generations of Dallasites.” He appointed a citizens advisory committee to examine possible uses for the 44-acre estate; Pinkus was one of his appointees.

At that point, Stahl says, “I didn’t know what the hell an arboretum was. I couldn’t pronounce it; I couldn’t spell it.”

But he and the Park Board wanted the land to be “something special and unique that will be in keeping with the living of the DeGolyers, something that we don’t already have in our city.”

Stahl imagined that the society, with its roughly 200 members, could enter into a public-private partnership with the city to make this happen, similar to the way Old City Park, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Dallas Zoo operated.

Just a few months later, the committee recommended that “the long-range development of an arboretum would be an appropriate use” of the DeGolyer land, and the Park Board approved.

A ‘WORLD-CLASS’ ARBORETUM OR A ‘BOTANIC AMUSEMENT PARK’?

Nothing much changed for a few years, except that the DeGolyer estate was now a city park open to all Dallasites.

In 1980, the society purchased the neighboring 22-acre Camp estate; as past arboretum chairman Brian Shivers tells it, that purchase was all due to the late Virginia Belcher, a Lakewood commercial real estate broker. She received a tip that the Camp estate land was about to be sold to a high-density condo developer and was told, “if you can come up with $550,000 in a hurry, they’ll sell it to you instead,” Shivers says. Another board member, Ralph Rogers, lent the money to clinch the deal.

The DeGolyer and Camp houses were the only structures on the site for some time. It wasn’t until 1985 that the society hosted the first Dallas Blooms festival. Around the same time, the society began charging admission — $2 per adult and $1 per child. It also began soliciting annual memberships, which climbed from 764 in 1984 to more than 3,000 in 1987. The society had a $50 million master plan, and its goal was to raise $20 million over the next 10 to 15 years, with city officials pledging to kick in $30 million.

But at $2 a head for admission and $50 a pop for a family membership, it was slow going. The society’s real bread and butter was philanthropic fundraising spearheaded by the charismatic Rogers, who by then was board chairman.

To this day, the mention of Rogers engenders reverence among arboretum devotees and incites scorn from detractors. He was known as a visionary who wouldn’t take no for an answer, which worked to his advantage in both business and phil-

1997: The first “Cool Thursdays” concert series launches on balmy summer evenings, and A Woman’s Garden opens in the fall.

2001: The arboretum breaks ground on the $20 million Trammell Crow Visitor Education Pavilion at the Dallas Arboretum, funded partially with bond money approved in 1995. Brinegar calls it “the beginning of a new era in botanical education and enhanced visitor experiences at the arboretum.” Thornton, leading the private fundraising charge, agrees that “it ratchets the arboretum up to the next level.”

2006: The arboretum debuts a pumpkin house at its renamed Autumn at the Arboretum festival, launching a new tradition that evolves into a pumpkin village with crowds that outnumber its visitors during Dallas Blooms.

2012: White Rock Lake preservationists receive word of the arboretum’s plans to use the grass field of Winfrey Point, just northwest of the arboretum in White Rock Lake Park, for overflow parking during the Chihuly exhibit. They also acquire documents revealing the arboretum and park department’s conversations and preliminary plans to incorporate Winfrey Point into the arboretum property, with part of the field becoming a permanent parking lot. Protestors descend on Winfrey Point with picket signs, and plans for both temporary and permanent parking are scrapped.

The Chihuly blown-glass exhibit opens at the arboretum, attracting 300,000 visitors and increasing attendance by 42 percent from 2011.

2013: The $63 million 8-acre Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden opens on the last of the arboretum’s undeveloped land.

2014: The arboretum opens a 1,150-space parking garage across Garland Road from the children’s garden.

2015: The 31st annual Dallas Blooms festival featuring 500,000 tulips is expected to attract 140,000 visitors before the end of April. The redesigned Lay Family Garden will open as part of the

Sources: Dallas Morning News historical archives, City of Dallas Municipal Archives, Dallas Arboretum, interviews anthropic pursuits. Rogers founded Texas Industries (now TXI) and turned it into a multi-million dollar company, and he also is credited with saving both local KERA Channel 13 and the entire Public Broadcasting System during his six-year PBS chairmanship in the ’70s.

No one disagrees that when Rogers took over as chairman of the arboretum society, he defined its trajectory. Shivers recalls a board meeting in those early days when the directors “got off on a esoteric rant” trying to determine: Was the property a botanical garden? An arboretum? Or what?

Rogers gave this admonition to the board: “Let me remind you, we are not just in the plant business — we are in show business.”

He was right, Shivers says. At the time, the property wasn’t much more than “a glorified dog park,” he says. The Camp estate was covered in bamboo that wound up taking years to unearth. The DeGolyers’ historic gardens were gorgeous, but they needed a lot of work — “expensive work,” Shivers says — that the city couldn’t afford. The city’s budget for the DeGolyer property when the society took over as manager in 1982 was “not enough to mow the grass,” Shivers says.

At the time, Shivers scrounged up enough money to conduct a public awareness survey “to see if anybody knew who we were,” he says. Of the people who said they knew of the arboretum, when asked where it was, most mentioned the garden center in Fair Park.

“They really didn’t know who we were, where we were, what we were,” Shivers says. “We settled on the idea that for this to be successful, we had to generate our own operating funds, and a display garden was what we needed to be. We weren’t going to survive as a research organization.

“We realized we needed to go on the expansion program that would build new gardens and draw new people out.”

Rogers started casting out nets to prominent Dallas donors. In 1985, he caught a big fish — businessman Ross Perot agreed to pledge $8 million to the cause. Perot’s gift hinged on several requirements, including that the city plant tens of thousands of blossoming trees along the lake’s shoreline. Perot’s gift doubled the other $8 million in donations and pledges Rogers had drummed up, leaving the society only $4 million short on its end of the bargain. It was full speed ahead to what Rogers described as a “world-class” venue “for the city of Dallas, for North Texas, for the world.”

Soon afterward, people who lived near the arboretum — who didn’t have millions of dollars to throw around, but whose tax dollars had helped purchase the land — began questioning the arboretum’s grand plans. A bond program proposed the same year as Perot’s $8 million pledge included almost $40 million for Dallas parks and recreation centers, $7.5 million of it for the arboretum.

Society members were caught off guard when their master plan, drafted by a “na- tionally prominent consulting firm,” came under fire from some of their neighbors. The mudslinging began, with opponents referring to the society’s “world-class” vision as a “botanic amusement park.”

“The facility we’re proposing would provide the missing piece for Dallas — a place of natural beauty that everyone is proud of and can go to enjoy nature,” society president Robert Tener protested in a 1988 Dallas Morning News Sunday magazine (Dallas Life) story “Feud among the Flowers” by Glenna Whitley.

Opponents weren’t swayed. They began urging defeat of the bond program’s entire $40 million in parks funds to block the arboretum’s city cash flow. They also suggested the arboretum’s $7.5 million be voted on individually. The city council refused, however, deciding Dallas citizens weren’t familiar enough with the arboretum for it to stand on its own at the ballot box.

Ultimately, the bond proposition passed.

Residents lost that fight, but it turned out the battle wasn’t over. It raged on until a city council vote stopped the society in its tracks.

THE 1987 ‘BATTLE OF THE ARBORETUM’

The puzzle, both then and now, is what is so odious about botanical gardens?

The problem, both then and now, is not only what but who. As residents around the lake caught wind of the giant flower garden about to be constructed in their backyard, they grew increasingly concerned that the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society was more society than botanical.

The master plan was the kicker.

The arboretum so long championed by Pinkus — one that would be a “teaching tool” and “testing ground” — had morphed under Rogers’ leadership beyond plants and trees to include a sculpted-hedge maze, a six-story conservatory, a festival marketplace, privately owned restaurants, an auditorium, an outdoor amphitheater, dormitories for research students and an observation tower with views of the grounds and the downtown skyline.

This was no ode to nature, residents argued. It infuriated them that the plan had received the Park Board’s stamp of approval without input from neighbors. When they voiced their fears and frustrations with Rogers, Tener and the rest of the society, they felt no one listened or cared.

So they turned to the city council for an audience.

In May 1987, Tener approached the city with a request to use $100,000 of the $7.5 million in bond funds to renovate the DeGolyer estate’s garage into a gift shop. Asking for a fraction of the funds taxpayers had already granted to a master plan-approved project was not a controversial request, or so the society thought. It wasn’t expecting a dozen people from six different neighborhoods to voice their dissension at the microphone, and it certainly wasn’t expecting the council to vote 6-5 in favor of residents.

It was a pivotal moment in the relationship between the arboretum and its neighbors. Suddenly, the society was no longer beholden only to the donors forking over their millions, but also to neighbors holding no more stake in the arboretum than any other Dallas taxpayer.

Craig Holcomb, the East Dallas councilman at the time, convened a task force with neighborhood and arboretum repre- to advertise call 214.560.4203

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The thrust of the task force’s resolution, he says, was that the arboretum could develop the Camp and DeGolyer estates the way they wanted, subject to city review and approval, “but they had to keep their hands off White Rock Lake Park.”

In other words, Jung says, “they stay on their side of the fence, and we stay on our side of the fence.”

Decades later, Jung says people are still miffed at him for signing off on such an agreement. The arboretum “proceeded to develop in a very, very highly cultivated way,” he says, much to the chagrin of many environmentalists and recreationalists who live around the lake.

Even with this agreement, though, the society remained in a precarious situation. It had spent $550,000 to purchase the Camp estate, and an agreement with the city required the society to deed over the estate. The city would own all 66 acres, and the society would manage it. But the 6-5 vote and task force discussions opened the board of directors’ eyes to the fact that they were at the whim of city politicians, and a single election could change everything. They needed a planned development district to safeguard their plans.

So the society launched a zoning process that required dozens of public meetings. Some turned into emotional confrontations, with neighbors accusing the society of “withholding information,” “having a secret agenda to take over the entire White Rock Lake Park,” and “being used by ‘North Dallas’ interests to manage a private country club,” the 1988 Morning News story reports.

At one point, Rogers reportedly referred to opponents as a “pack of yapping dogs.” Residents literally wore that moniker proudly when a Little Forest Hills resident made T-shirts emblazoned with “Yapping Dog Club.”

By the time it was over, the arboretum threw out plans for the observatory tower, dormitories and festival marketplace, and scaled back the rest of the building-heavy vision. Sculpture gardens gave way to more natural gardens, and mature trees were preserved. The concrete amphitheater became a natural concert bowl. The ostentatious master plan of 1984 was scrapped for a more sensitive master plan in 1987.

In her article, Whitley described it this way: “The 1987 Battle of the Arboretum, in future years, may be marked as the fight that gave New Dallas politics ascendance over the Old Dallas method of getting things done. Consultation, conciliation and compromise ousted lunch-with-the-mayorat-the-City-Club deal making. For better or worse, the arboretum tussle proved that the days of big dreamers with good intentions and big bucks deciding what is best for the city are over.”

Robert Hoffman, who during the scuffle had replaced Rogers as society chairman, promised: “We’re not going to have this kind of intense public debate again. And we’ve made a commitment to have communications with neighborhood leaders on a