New garden to showcase native flora, sustainable practices

A new garden in the works at UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens will blend southeastern native flora, sustainable practices and smart home landscape design in a 1/5-acre showplace that will add to the diversity of these public gardens.

The design for the Mellichamp Native Terrace Garden combines common home landscape features – wooden and stone terraces, low stone walls, gravel paths and a dry/storm water-fed streambed. The garden will showcase a variety of native plants that fill common landscape needs, such as for groundcovers, specimen plants, flower borders, privacy hedges and foundation plantings.

It also will feature a rain garden, native lawn and lawn substitutes and a mini-meadow planting. The vision for this garden is to inspire and inform visitors about the beauty, horticultural utility and sustainability of the southeastern flora.

Very few UNC Charlotte faculty members can say they will celebrate their retirement by having an entire garden named after them – but Larry Mellichamp will when he finally goes into the full bloom of retirement at the end of 2014.

Mellichamp has been director of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences for nearly four decades. He has written technical and lay articles on plants and gardening and has co-authored four books, including “Native Plants of the Southeast: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best 460 Species for the Garden” and “Bizarre Botanicals: Weird and Wonderful Plants You Can Grow” (with Paula Gross). The North Carolina Native Plant Society presented him its B.W.Wells award for education efforts.

A fundraising campaign took root in the spring to raise $150,000 by December 2014 to complete the garden’s installation. Gifts are still being accepted; contact Mai Li Muñoz at mai.li.munoz@uncc.edu or 704-687-0084.