A 37-acre coastal garden in Dagsboro is set to open to the general public next week.
The Delaware Botanic Gardens (DBG) is located along Pepper Creek and will consist of four main gardens and a rustic cedar “Potting Shed” that will serve as a welcome center.
"Kind of the crown jewel for us is the Meadow Garden designed by Piet Oudolf," said Brent Baker, communications director for the DBG, “You might not know who he is; he’s a world-famous Dutch garden designer. And he designed the meadow, which has 70,000 native plants and grasses; all were hand-planted by our volunteers.”
Baker says there’s also a Learning Garden, sort of the educational hub of the Botanic Gardens.
“[It] is composed of a wetland outdoor classroom and that’s where we have hands-on training of how the environment works in a wetland. And we also have three inland dunes,”Baker said.
Baker adds there’s a Folly Garden, which consists of 2,500 bulb plants and will become a sea of yellow daffodils in the spring.
The final piece is the Woodland Garden, a 12-acre forest with freshwater wetlands.
Baker says the site used to be a soybean field and some Sussex County residents who thought it was time the County had its own public botanic garden in southern Delaware, got together in 2012 and decided to lease the land for $1 dollar a year for 99-years from the Sussex County Land Trust.
There will be a grand openning dinner (sold out with 340 guests) on Thursday, September 12, 2019 from 5 to 9 p.m.
A week-long public grand opening begins on Monday, September 16. That day and on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 17 and 18, respectively, the DBG is open from 9 a.m. to noon.
A ribbon cutting is planned for Thursday, September 19 at 1 p.m.; the Gardens are open that day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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