The Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville is launching two major expansions, as well as planning ahead as it approaches 20 years of operation.
The garden received a $220,000 gift from Nancy (née Totemeier) and William D. Koch this fall, which will help fund the construction of a new greenhouse and renovations to the nonprofit’s event center.
Nancy Koch is the daughter of Carl Totemeier, one of the garden’s original organizers.
“We’re at a really meaningful tipping point,” Ashley Wardlow, the garden’s executive director, said in an interview with Arkansas Business. The garden in 2027 will mark two decades of being open to the public. The next year marks the first 25 years of its 100-year lease with the city.
Greenhouse Upgrades
The new greenhouse will be built next to to the garden’s existing 3,000-SF facility. The current greenhouse accommodates up to 9,000 pots at a time, but the garden typically needs more than 14,000 plants for seasonal changeovers, according to Wardlow.
“It gets really, really full in there before we do a switch,” Wardlow said. The new greenhouse will also be 3,000 SF.
The existing greenhouse also has some design limitations. The building is a semi-circle shape, which limits headspace for workers and stacking plants on the sides.
The floor is half-gravel, half-concrete, so garden staff have to spend time weeding the inside of the greenhouse instead of the plants, Wardlow said.
That means the new greenhouse will have a fully concrete floor. It will also have a more traditional shape to provide more space for both plants and people.
In addition to more capacity, Wardlow hopes the new greenhouse will allow the garden to incorporate the facilities into visits and educational programming. Until now, the greenhouses have been back-of-house operations not typically open to visitors.
More than 6,000 students visit the garden for school trips annually.
The new facility will also house the Arkansas Gardening School, a program the garden launched this year for novice gardeners.
“Being able to accommodate people in spaces like the greenhouse will allow us to add something that’s more hands-on and more interactive, which is a great way for people to learn,” Wardlow said.
Event Center Updates
Another garden building set for major renovations is the Carl A. Totemeier Horticulture & Event Center.
That building serves as the primary entry point for the garden, as well as staff offices and event spaces. It is also highly visible from Highway 265.
“It is the face of the garden in a lot of ways,” Wardlow said. “So to have it refreshed is going to be really impactful.”
Renovation work will include new exterior siding, refinished entry doors, updated restroom facilities, new flooring, and desks and seating for the second-floor offices.
And though those improvements may not be “super glamorous,” Wardlow said, they are vital for the structural integrity of the building as well as the visitor experience.
“It’s going to be a really dramatic transformation,” she said, though the renovations will maintain the building’s current design and square footage.
Future Plans
Construction of the new greenhouse began Nov. 11. Both projects are scheduled to be completed in 2026. The garden is working with a local architecture firm for the projects, though Wardlow declined to disclose which firm. McGowan Built Properties of Fayetteville participated in the greenhouse groundbreaking.
Wardlow said “there are some other things that are in the pipeline” for the garden that weren’t public knowledge yet.
Those plans “are going to allow us to continue to grow, not just in terms of capital projects, but also thinking about the long term financial success of the garden and how we can invest for it,” Wardlow said.
The garden has at least 20 employees and sees more than 100,000 visitors a year. As the region grows in population and tourism, Wardlow expects that number to rise.
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