Liberty Hyde Bailey Loop Preview

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Nevin Welcome Center

Welcome to the Liberty Hyde Bailey Loop! This walking path connects the Cornell Botanic Gardens with the rest of campus, where you will see how plants and people have come together within campus gardens. Named after renowned botanist and founder of Cornell’s College of Agriculture, the route is a living tribute to Liberty Hyde Bailey’s holistic approach to teaching, and a reminder that the outdoors are an excellent classroom. Surrounded by specialty gardens, the Nevin Welcome Center is your entryway to exploring the Cornell Botanic Gardens. Here you will find a reception desk, maps of the grounds, art displays, and interpretive exhibits highlighting the deep connections between plants and people.

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Herb Garden

This garden features over 500 varieties of herbs, which are plants that have human use or significance. Uniquely arranged into 17 themed beds, visitors can explore the creative ways that different cultures have interacted with herbs throughout history. With beds including Fragrant Herbs, Medicinal Herbs, Culinary Herbs, and Herbs of the Ancients, the close relationship between people and plants is on full display.

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Flower Garden

This lush flower garden celebrates significant relationships between people and plants by showcasing key cultural connections, symbolic meanings associated with well-known flowers, and how they are reflected in art, literature, and myth. A combination of annuals, tender perennials, ephemeral bulbs, and shrubs can be found here. The diversity of plant life cycles, size, texture and color aim to delight, inspire, and showcase horticultural practices.

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Winter Garden

This one-acre area was curated to showcase plants that shine during the winter months. It contains over 700 plants chosen for their interesting bark texture, bark color, unusual shape, winter fruit, cones, or evergreen foliage. These qualities provide color and interest during Ithaca’s long winters, providing a year-round destination for finding plant beauty.

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Pounder Vegetable Garden

This vegetable garden features plant varieties that are easy to grow and nutritious, including edible ornamentals. It is also home to the Climate Change Garden, which allows visitors to see for themselves how plants are affected by rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns. Throughout the garden, look for demonstrations on sustainable gardening practices such as efficient water-use, attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects, using organic materials and methods, composting plant waste, and nourishing your soil.

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Deans Garden

First installed prior to World War II, the Deans Garden celebrates the current and former deans of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Full of new and unusual cultivated varieties of landscape plants, this garden is often used by horticulture and landscape design classes. It also offers a quiet spot for reading, reflection, or a break from studying at Mann Library.

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Gardens on the Ag Quad

Every year since 2001, students in “Creating the Urban Eden: Woody Plant Selection, Design, and Landscape Establishment” have taken on real-world projects by designing and installing gardens on campus each spring. Students get their hands dirty, literally and figuratively, as they design spaces to be enjoyed by the entire CALS community. Here at the entrance to Mann Library, the garden follows the Sustainable SITES guidelines, which assesses the sustainable design, construction, and maintenance of landscapes.

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A. D. White Gardens

Home to Cornell’s first president, Andrew Dickson White, the A.D. White House features stunning backyard gardens. The landscaping was originally designed by Daisy Farrand, spouse of Cornell’s fourth president, who created a two-tiered wall garden, a curved wall garden facing the house, perennial borders, a croquet lawn, and “Daisy’s Secret Garden” for mediation and intimate conversation. Although not an exact replica, today’s recreated gardens continue to offer a green oasis at the heart of campus.

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Minns Garden

A delightful mix of annual and perennial ornamental plants, the Minns Garden was established in the 1910s to teach students hands-on horticulture. Named after Lau A. Minns, Cornell’s first female floriculture professor, the garden has been managed by horticulture students for over one hundred years. Originally located at the site of Malott Hall, today the garden is found behind the Plant Sciences Building where students, faculty, and visitors alike can enjoy the whimsical charm of its garden gates, bulb flowers, and perennial beds.

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L.H.B Conservatory

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory is a living collection of over 650 species of exotic tropical and subtropical plants. Open to the public 10am-3pm on most weekdays, the conservatory offers a space for teaching, research, outreach, and enjoyment. Liberty Hyde Bailey believed that greenhouses were vital to the mission of an agricultural college, and various greenhouses have occupied the area since 1882.Click here to view current hours on the website.

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Kienzle Overlook

This overlook offers a sweeping view of the Cornell Botanic Gardens’ specialty gardens and Nevin Welcome Center. The site features a selection of dwarf conifers, which is part of a larger collection of conifers that cover this hillside. Visitors can also cast their gaze down the hill, getting a bird’s-eye-view of the gardens that offer a respite from the bustle of campus life.Follow the trail, called the Buzz Line, down the hill to return to the Cornell Botanic Gardens. But first, you may want to venture across the street to the Cornell Dairy Bar, where you can enjoy some campus-made ice cream and other treats.