Our Crowdfunding Groups
With your help, we can keep the Greenhouse and Gardens beautiful, and offer quality botanical programming to the community! Our suggested donation is $4/visitor. Additional donations can help support our educational programs, including our Certificate in Native Plant Studies, At Home in the Garden workshops, adult and children's arts programming, and more!
Learn more about our upcoming events.
Begun in 1966 on the newly-established Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina system, the Botanical Gardens was the brainchild of biology professor Dr. Herbert Hechenbleikner and UNC Charlotte founder, Bonnie E. Cone.
The Gardens were created to serve as a living classroom for biology students and as a horticultural and botanical resource for the campus and greater community. This was a unique beginning, as university botanical gardens usually spring from a formal horticulture or botany department. Despite the absence of those departments, the Gardens founders believed a university campus was not complete without the educational and cultural resource of a thoughtful, managed botanical garden. This vision became possible through the support of members of the Charlotte community, especially Mr. Ralph Van Landingham, and the hard work of Dr. Hechenbleikner and previous Director, Dr. Larry Mellichamp.
For a more detailed and extensive history of the Gardens, read our new publications: Growing Gardens, the History of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens by Susan Scholly.
