"indoor gardens at Duke Farms... 2,740-acre country estate... once the home of Doris Duke and is now maintained by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation...
glass building (... one long conservatory and five attached glass houses) is... one of the largest glass houses in America [North...]... bigger... than the New York Botanical Garden's Enid Haupt Conservatory... It was designed by Horace Trumbauer for Ms. Duke's father, and construction was begun in 1909 and completed by 1917... Duke Farms... display gardens opened in 1964, will be transformed into an ecological environment learning center. In 1958, Ms. Duke decided to transform what had previously served as a utilitarian greenhouse into a series of 11 linked garden rooms, each one emblematic of the horticultural style of a particular country... the gardens were closed forever... 20,000 to 50,000 annual visitors to Duke Farms... Tim Taylor, the executive director of Duke Farms... the trustees of the Duke Charitable Foundation... are mostly bankers, many of whom receive $126,000 a year for serving on the board. .... Mr. Taylor... explained that shortly after he was hired in 2004, "a strategic revisioning process" got under way to enable Duke Farms to "make the transition from being a minor tourist destination to an ecological environmental learning center." The plan calls for turning the entire park into a "living green environment." This will be done by restoring a native meadow habitat, removing invasive plants, keeping deer in check, and providing a 700-acre network of biking and hiking trails. There will be a new "green" orientation center, new perennial borders planted with only native plants, and a number of new educational programs. ... it's harder to understand why these historic and much loved indoor display gardens, so dear to Ms. Duke's heart, cannot coexist with the native plants and the bike trails. Yes, these glass buildings are now inefficient and cost a fortune to heat, but we are talking about one of the richest foundations in America -- one that has committed "several tens of millions" to this new greening of the park and part of whose mission, as stated on the front page of its Web site, is to preserve the cultural legacy of Doris Duke's properties. Mr. Taylor wants his critics to understand that the orchids now in the Edwardian room of the indoor display gardens will be moved to a smaller 1899 Lord and Burnham greenhouse known as the Orchid Range but soon to be renamed in honor of Joan Spero, the president of the foundation. This will be renovated to what Mr. Taylor explains is an LED standard (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). And, he says, it will give the public a "better series of educational messages to connect the importance of orchids to horticulture." But, since the Orchid Range has none of the period fixtures of the display gardens, this is small consolation for the lovers of those display gardens... Petra Ross MacDonald, a biologist from Pennington, N.J., has organized a Web site, savedukegardens.org, to rally support for keeping the indoor display gardens. Ruth Schrey, a resident of Branchburg Township, collected 1,000 signatures within 14 days for a petition that was sent... to all the trustees, and an application to apply for historic landmark status is in the works. Ms. Ross MacDonald argues that if the Orchid Range can be renovated and brought up to modern LED standards, this foundation with almost $2 billion in assets also should be willing to use its resources to find a carbon-neutral and energy-efficient way to heat, cool and make its larger display gardens a model of sustainability, thus placing itself in the forefront of environmental-conservation technology. One has to hope that with a little more imagination and a little more sensitivity to the fact that Ms. Duke's display gardens are quite irreplaceable, their destruction might still be avoided" URL : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121192910041724297.html ******************* Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
