Growing Memories for 75 Years

In 1934, Dr. Frederic M. Hanes saw promise in a debris-filled ravine that he passed walking to work at Duke Hospital. Hanes convinced Sarah P. Duke to support the creation of a garden full of annuals, bulbs and irises. Sadly, the heavy summer rains of 1935 washed away most of the plantings.

Sarah P. Duke died in September 1936 and never saw the garden that is her namesake in bloom. Her daughter, Mary Duke Biddle, funded the building of the pergola and Terrace Gardens in 1939 in memory of her mother. A plaque on the floor of the pergola now reads:

Sarah P. Duke Gardens given by Mary Duke Biddle In memory of her mother in whose life were blended the strength of the soil and the beauty of flowers

"I love the pergola with the wisteria and my mother's words," says Duke Biddle's daughter, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. "I love to sit there. My mother was irrepressible about flowers. Oh, she was so excited. Sometimes we'd catch her with a tulip or two and we'd say, ‘Mother where did you get that?' and she'd say, ‘Oh, the Gardens,' and we'd say, ‘You're not supposed to do that!' She'd look so sheepish. She was voracious about flowers. She was so proud of that place."

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens is home to a number of endangered species and plants and, over the last 75 years, has grown to include the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, the Culberson Asiatic Arboretum and the Doris Duke Center and Terrace Shop. Each year, more than 300,000 visitors tour the garden. It has hosted weddings, family picnics and educational programs, providing memories for visitors young and old.

As a child in the 1930s and 1940s, Joyce Avery remembers posing for pictures in the Terrace Gardens in her Easter finery.

"I remember the tulips and the flowering wisteria more than anything else," she says. "And the magnolia tree, that was the climbing tree; it was pretty young, but I can remember climbing that tree at some point. My children and my grandchildren climbed that tree, too." Today, Avery volunteers in the gardens' Terrace Shop.

Harry Jenkins recalls visiting Duke Gardens on field trips as a floriculture student at North Carolina State University. He fell in love with the gardens' beauty, and after an internship he took a full-time position there. Today, Jenkins is the gardens' superintendent and horticulturalist; he will celebrate his 37th anniversary there in June.

"It's always exciting because you look forward to coming in and seeing what needs to be done to enhance the beauty of the gardens, and we always have new projects being developed," Jenkins says.

Jenkins gardens at home, too, and at one time ran a part-time landscaping business. "Gardening is my life," he says. "Ask my son."

James Jenkins confirms he spent many a childhood weekend picnicking with his family in the gardens while his father Harry worked. In high school, James became a gardens volunteer and he recently joined the staff as a full-time gardening assistant.

Lu Howard moved to Durham from Illinois nine years ago and was not familiar with North Carolina's planting seasons. She has already taken nearly a hundred classes at Duke Gardens.

"We needed to know what the native plants were and how to deal with different kinds of plants and the soils, so we started taking classes," she says.

Notwithstanding last year's drought, the gardens continue to grow under the leadership of director Bill LeFevre, with plans for new gardens behind the Doris Duke Center, around the Durham-Toyama Sister Cities Pavilion, within the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants and throughout the historic core. There are also plans to add the Charlotte Brody Children's Garden, which will encourage children to explore the connection between plants and animals.

Duke alumna Suma Jones held naming ceremonies for two of her three children at Duke Gardens -- and she was married there.

"It's played such a big role in our lives and not just for special occasions but in terms of a place we go whenever the weather is nice," she says.

On her wedding day, a few drops of rain fell as she walked from the pergola to the fishpond where her husband-to-be was waiting. She welcomed the drops, noting, "in Hinduism, rain is a blessing."