ESA Spring of Service
April 23, 2022 | 8:00 am - 12:00 pm
NESA-SHAC is hosting a Spring of Service event. Join fellow Eagle Scouts in supporting the Houston Botanic Garden.
The volunteer project will focus on conservation in and around Houston Botanic Garden including removing debris and trash from the Meander, Sims Bayou, along with identifying invasive species, and removing them. In addition, maintaining, and cleaning up the western side of the Garden including removing tree debris, and removing invasive species.
RSVP
Please RSVP for planning purposes.
What to Bring
Wear weather-appropriate clothes that can get dirty. Wear long pants and closed-toed shoes or boots; a long-sleeved shirt is optional. Bring gloves, water bottle, snacks, sunscreen, hat, sunglasses, bandana, bug spray, and BSA Health and Medical Record. Participants will need a signed consent form provided onsite.
Parking
Please park at the South entrance gate. The address is 8205 N. Bayou Drive, Houston, Texas, 77017.
Contact
For questions, contact Shane Burks.
About Houston Botanic Garden (the Garden)
Formed in 2002, Houston Botanic Garden is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enrich lives through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
The Garden broke ground in 2019 on a 132-acre site located a short distance from downtown Houston. The first of several planned phases over the next 30 years opened in fall 2020 as a major addition to Houston’s cultural landscape and growing list of greenspaces. The Garden provides a place for visitors to learn about plants, conservation, and nature; connects Houstonians across different cultures and ethnicities; and closes an existing gap in the world-class city’s collection of amenities for residents and tourists.
The Houston Botanic Garden, the city’s living museum for plants, opened its gates to the public on Sept. 18, 2020, near Hobby Airport, east of I-45 South on Park Place Blvd. The Garden has transformed 132 acres – which was once a municipal golf course – into an oasis of learning, discovery, and horticultural beauty, with outdoor gallery spaces displaying a collection of tropical, sub-tropical, and arid plants from around the world to showcase the biodiversity that thrives along the Texas Gulf Coast.
“Adding a world-class botanic garden to enhance the breadth and depth of Houston’s cultural offerings has been a long time in the making,” said Claudia Gee Vassar, president and general counsel of the Houston Botanic Garden. “We believe the benefits of an extensive outdoor museum like the Houston Botanic Garden are especially desirable at a time when so many are looking to engage with and be inspired by nature.”
Through its design and programming, the Garden, a collaboration with West 8, an award-winning international landscape designer, seeks to enrich lives through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
“The intent of the site design is to seek balance in all aspects, from planting and soils, through topography and materials—the careful juxtaposition of order and chaos that is at the heart of enduring gardens,” said Donna Bridgeman-Rossi, PLA, director of implementation, West 8 NY. “With this being Houston’s first garden of this kind it was exciting to be working with a client group that not only expects best practice but is open to the complexities required to push status quo into new territory or specification.”
Each time visitors come to the Houston Botanic Garden, they exchange the bustle of the city for the enveloping serenity of multiple features, which include:
- Global Collection Garden: Three acres of regionally themed zones – such as the mountain forests of Mexico, grasslands of an African savanna, and an Asian bamboo tunnel – that demonstrate the wide variety of diverse and beautiful plants from around the world that flourish in Houston’s climate.
- Culinary Garden: An artistic display of edible and medicinal plants – many of which visitors could grow in their own yards – that have served as a basis for economic and cultural exchange across the history of the world.
- Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden: A sensory-engaging area that presents opportunities for families to engage with nature in a variety of ways, including a boardwalk maze around a lagoon; simple water machines, and nature play structures crafted from trees that previously grew on the property.
- Woodland Glade: An intimate-yet-open space that visitors can rent – beginning later in the fall – to host weddings and other celebrations under a mature overstory of trees surrounded by the beauty of magnolias and sculpted hedges.
Curated natural ecosystems surrounding these features have visual appeal as well, while also promoting conversation of soil, air, water, and wildlife. To learn more about the Houston Botanic Garden, visit www.hbg.org.