Botanical Garden Growth Raises Concern

Walt Eilers, president of the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks Board of Directors, right, and Ron Cox, executive director of the Botanical Garden, walk along a section of the soft trail on the southeast side of Lake Fayetteville in an April file photo.
Walt Eilers, president of the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks Board of Directors, right, and Ron Cox, executive director of the Botanical Garden, walk along a section of the soft trail on the southeast side of Lake Fayetteville in an April file photo.

FAYETTEVILLE — More than 100 people came to the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks on Wednesday to hear about plans to expand the garden’s footprint on land it leases from the city.

Many who spoke at the forum raised concern about the impact growth could have on wildlife, Lake Fayetteville’s shoreline and a stretch of the soft-surface nature trail around the lake. Some argued against fencing off and charging a fee to access parkland that for years has been available for public use.

At A Glance

Plant Sale

The Botanical Garden of the Ozarks will hold its annual plant sale this weekend at the garden, 4703 N. Crossover Road. A variety of plants will be available. The sale begins for garden members only from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday. It will continue for the public from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday. For more information, go to bgozarks.org or call 479-750-2620.

Source: Botanical Garden of the Ozarks

“This park is unique,” said David Chapman, a bird enthusiast and University of Arkansas professor. “It’s unique within the Fayetteville system. It’s the jewel in fact within the Fayetteville system.

“I want to see that continue, and I don’t want to see any development like this, which I believe is in your face and over the top.”

For the most part, the botanical garden’s long-range plan is nothing new. The last version of the nonprofit group’s plan, which the City Council approved in 2001, also identified a desire for more demonstration gardens, a nature education center, more parking and a small amphitheater. Those amenities were moved and reconfigured in a 2013 proposed update to the plan, which also must be approved by city officials.

The plan calls for new features on land west of an open meadow where the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market operates. A roughly quarter-mile stretch of Lake Fayetteville’s 7-mile nature trail runs through the area.

The botanical garden’s board last month recommended moving the dirt trail and connecting it to a paved trail south of the garden. After meeting with members of the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association and Northwest Arkansas Audubon Society, garden officials tweaked their proposal. Now they want to move the nature trail closer to Lake Fayetteville’s southern shoreline. That would give wildlife and hikers, bikers and runners a pathway to circumvent the garden’s proposed fence line, said Walt Eilers, president of the garden’s board.

The city’s streamside protection ordinance permits trail construction within 25 and 50 feet of waterways. Most other construction activities are prohibited.

The botanical garden and the nature trail, which for years has been maintained by the Ozark Off Road Cyclists club, are two popular amenities at Lake Fayetteville. Botanical garden attendance reached nearly 80,000 last year, according to an annual report to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. That includes roughly 10,000 schoolchildren who came to the garden for nature education.

Recent counts provided by Matt Mihalevich, city trails coordinator, tracked about 4,800 people using the nature trail on the southeast side of the lake between March 22 and April 22. Those counts came during a month that saw nearly 6 inches of rain and overnight temperatures that dipped well into the 30s, according to the National Weather Service.

Steve Schneider, vice president of Ozark Off Road Cyclists, estimated Wednesday that volunteers have logged more than 4,000 hours during the past 2 1/2 years to clean up and realign the nature trail.

Schneider said it would be environmentally difficult and cost prohibitive to build a stretch of trail in a sensitive wetland area close to the lake.

“The only way it will work is with huge amounts of money to put boardwalks in and bridges,” he said. “This existing trail has been there for years. It works fine.”

Eilers said it would be up to the botanical garden to pay for moving any trail on land it leases from the city. He emphasized garden officials are in the early stages of determining what an expanded garden would look like.

“Our point as a botanical garden is: We need to know where that trail will be and what we will have remaining to develop,” Eilers said.

He said it’s difficult to predict a timetable for what he estimated to be a $55 million fundraising effort. It may take 15 years to accumulate money from private donors, Eilers added.

Members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board could make a recommendation to the City Council on the garden’s plan update at their May 6 meeting. Steve Meldrum, board chairman, said Wednesday it may take longer to come up with a solution.

“I would foresee this potentially being tabled until there’s additional study on where this trail can be relocated if it has to be at all,” Meldrum said.

John Pennington, a Washington County Cooperative Extension Service agent and chairman of the Lake Fayetteville Watershed Partnership, encouraged all groups involved to sit down and sort out their differences.

“I would like to see the groups that have an interest in this park be tasked with working together to come up with a plan that we can all agree on, which can then be submitted as a viable plan for the botanical garden moving forward,” Pennington said.

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