Devonian Botanic Garden Ecological Learning Centre

Devonian Botanic Garden Ecological Learning Centre

r eve r ee yg n tr ee

More grows in the garden than the gardener sows. old Spanish Proverb

Visitors marvel at what’s here.

We marvel at what could be.

The Devonian Botanic Garden is the northernmost botanic garden on the continent. It is a magical place with stunning display gardens, including the Kurimoto Japanese Garden, the Patrick Seymour Alpine Garden, Canada’s first Native People’s Garden and the Heritage Garden.

Sixty thousand visitors a year of all ages and walks of life are delighted by spectacular lilac, lily and peony beds, a one-acre herb garden, a nearby sensory and healing garden and one of western Canada’s largest rose gardens.

The Garden is home to beautiful greenhouses, a butterfly house, 11,000 named plants, an extensive nature trail system and 110 acres of natural areas and ecological preserves. And coming soon – thanks to a generous gift from His Highness the Aga Khan - is a breathtaking nine-acre Islamic Garden.

This calm place of rest and reflection

will be a reminder of paradise. It will add another major feature and outstanding attraction to the Devonian Botanic Garden.

As the Garden has grown to be a top-tier botanic garden, so have our challenges; our facilities are no longer adequate to meet the demands for our services. In order to welcome more visitors, properly host our oversubscribed education programs and provide appropriate research space, we are planning the construction of a new multi-purpose facility that will complement our spectacular gardens.

This welcome centre will be an iconic building that will provide much-needed space and support for all activities, including education, outreach and research.

Your contribution will help the Devonian Botanic Garden become one of Canada’s pre-eminent northern gardens and nature centres.

The Vision The Ecological Learning Centre (ELC) is the key to the Devonian Botanic Garden’s future growth. It is the foundation upon which the Garden will increase the number of annual visitors from 60,000 to 200,000, and become a year-round facility.

This state-of-the-art, 38,000 square-foot facility will provide a magnificent area to welcome more visitors, provide more space for community and public events, meet demand for more educational programming for adults, children and families, centralize current amenities and provide opportunities to expand all of the Garden’s many offerings.

Inspiration for the new ELC was drawn from the organic curves of Alberta’s

native aspen leaves. Designed to complement its natural surroundings of aspen, birch and spruce woodlands, the three-storey facility will welcome visitors with “green” walls, a fireplace, rooftop gardens and abundant plant life. The ELC will also house centralized amenities including a restaurant, gift shop and interpretive and educational displays.

The building itself will demonstrate the best sustainable design, construction and operational technologies: passive heating and cooling, waste heat capture for greenhouse use, passive solar and low-wattage lighting, recycled building materials, low water use fixtures, earthtube air pre-cooling, and an exceptionally tight building envelope.

People will not care about the world unless they have a love for it first. You only develop that love by experiencing it.

Dr. Jean Lomino

An Enhanced Event and Visitor Experience The Ecological Learning Centre will establish the Devonian Botanic Garden as a must–see destination for tourists and community members alike, who will be able to experience the incredible outdoor environs that have become the hallmark of the Devonian Botanic Garden.

The new Ecological Learning Centre will allow the Garden to host more and larger events, providing an additional event venue with a total capacity of 500 and complementing existing outdoor venues.

At present, events such as the winter Luminaria are at full capacity. While the outdoor spaces are spectacular, indoor spaces are badly worn and too small

The Garden gives you an outlet…we wanted a good facility where the children could volunteer and grow. Now the kids play music there in their band. It’s a non-commercial, natural and educational environment... we just love it.

Glenna, DBG volunteer and mother of four

to function well. Interpretive displays are all outdoors, as is the food service seating area. On cool or rainy days, there is nowhere for visitors to warm up or enjoy expanded information presentations.

Increasing the capacity for festivals and events will attract an increasing number of visitors who will enjoy the Garden and all it has to offer, from art shows to performances to garden festivals.

The enlarged gift shop will display an interesting selection of unique merchandise. The restaurant will be an attraction in its own right, offering food service in a superb setting. A new rooftop garden will be open to the public as a reflective space, providing remarkable views into the Main Garden, the Islamic Garden and the Kurimoto Japanese Garden.

An Enhanced Educational Experience The Ecological Learning Centre will be a true community gathering place where people come to learn, celebrate, discover and interact with each other and the natural environment.

The ELC will greatly increase the Garden's capacity to offer educational programming. Teaching space will grow from one to six classrooms. This will allow the Garden to more than double the number of children attending Green School and Kids in the Garden programs. Some of these children have little or no regular access to natural areas; all of them benefit physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually through connection to the outdoors.

Expansion of educational space will allow an increase in enrolment capacity in the well-respected Master Gardener program.

More high school and post-secondary students will be able to visit the Garden for a varied offering of courses, including biology, tree identification, culinary herbs, wetland ecology and visual arts communications. Adjacent laboratories, collections, herbaria and library space will complement the classrooms.

Capacity for community educational programming will also grow. There are currently over 100 adult and family courses offered at the Garden, with demand far exceeding capacity.

The new building will allow for more frequent and expanded course offerings.

The new ELC will also house administrative offices, currently located in portables which have outlasted their useful life.

Green School was the best week of my life – I discovered plants, animals, and most importantly, nature. Please! Oh please, let me come back!

Miller, an elementary-school student

An Enhanced Research Experience The collection of plant data at the Devonian Botanic Garden started 35 years ago and continues to provide insights into climate change, hardiness and reclamation. The Garden works closely with University and private researchers to understand topics as diverse as fungal associations, forest fires, wetland reclamation, bat and frog monitoring, and oilsands reclamation plants.

Botanic gardens worldwide are essential to plant conservation and public education.The Devonian Botanic Garden is a part of a global network of botanic gardens working to understand and preserve biodiversity. Expansion of research programs and facilities will add to our knowledge of plant communities, predictive plant diversity models, re-vegetation and reclamation.

You can’t do conservation work unless you intimately understand the organisms you’re working with. Discovery and learning about plants happens in the field, and the DBG is one of few places in Canada where field-oriented botanists can engage in whole-plant research.

RENÉ J. BELLAND, FSO

The Ecological Learning Centre will house 5,000 square feet of research area including two wet clean labs, a sample preparation lab, a seed cooler and a walk-in cool space suitable for plant growth chambers. Several offices will be designated for resident and visiting scientists.

The facility will encourage researchers to come to the Garden with their questions and use the facilities to find the answers. It will expand current research to include areas of study such as plant physiology, chemical analyses of soil cores, tissue culture, seed germination and seed bank preparation and storage.

A rooftop garden attached to the research labs will be maintained for planting and growth trials.

The Garden is a glorious place. The new building will allow us to share its wonder and beauty with thousands more people.

Lee Foote, Director

An Enhanced Devonian Botanic Garden For the past 20 years the Devonian Botanic Garden has delighted and connected people with the beauty of nature. And for more than 50 years, it has provided a living laboratory for important environmental, ecological and horticultural research.

Our facilities are inadequate and outdated. Office space and research areas are housed in trailers that have far outlived their functional lives.

Visitor facilities have insufficient space for interpretive displays; the gift shop, washrooms and other guest service areas are no longer able to meet demand.

The time has come for the Garden to take the next step and become one of the greatest facilities of its kind in Canada.

We invite you to partner with us in growing those areas that make the Garden a unique and rare asset.

Your support is needed.

You can play a leadership role in creating a unique building that will enable thousands more to experience nature first-hand at the Devonian Botanic Garden.

There are many opportunities for support available throughout the new Ecological Learning Centre, and we look forward to discussing them with you.

Your involvement is important.

To be a part of the Ecological Learning Centre Capital Campaign, please contact

Katherine Irwin Senior Development Officer Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences 2-14 Ag For Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2P5 Phone 780-492-2118 Fax 780-492-8524 Email Katherine.irwin@ualberta.ca www.ales.ualberta.ca