FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, Sept. 17, 2012
Contact: Orla Swift
(919) 668-6451
Orla.swift@duke.edu 

DUKE GARDEN PROJECT AMONG THOSE CERTIFIED FOR SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPES

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden, part of Duke University’s Sarah P. Duke Gardens, is one of eight pilot projects certified by the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) for its sustainable site design, construction and maintenance.

SITES is an interdisciplinary effort led by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the United States Botanic Garden. SITES creates a voluntary national rating system and guidelines for sustainable landscapes of all types.

The Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden opened to the public this month. It is a teaching garden intended to help people understand and apply sustainable landscaping ideas at home. The garden features organic vegetable beds, an orchard, fruiting shrubs and vines, a reconstructed tobacco barn, a rain garden, a chicken coop, cold frames for winter planting, outdoor classroom space and two cisterns that can hold more than 7,000 gallons of rainwater.

The garden’s namesake was an early and avid organic gardener from Kinston, N.C.
In May 2010, the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden was one of more than 150 national and international projects to be chosen by the SITES partners to test out the rating system and guidelines.

“SITES helped us fulfill our commitment to sustainable building by giving us real and measurable benchmarks to meet,” said Robert Mottern, Duke Gardens’ director of horticulture. “With the buy-in and assistance of the designers and contractors, we were able to complete a garden area that serves the entire community with strategies and techniques that protect the future.”

The other seven sites receiving certification are: Cleveland’s Public Garden; Cornell University’s Mann Library entrance; Hunts Point Landing in Bronx, N.Y.; the Meadow Lake/main parking lot at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill.; Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido, Calif.; SWT Design Campus in St. Louis; and Victoria Garden Mews in Santa Barbara, Calif. Three other projects had previously received certification.

Major funding for the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden came from the family of Charlotte Brody, the Burpee Foundation, and the F.M. Kirby Foundation.  

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