Cornell Botanic Gardens: Nevin Welcome Center Gardens Preview

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Nevin Welcome Center

Surrounded by speciality gardens, the Nevin Welcome Center is your entryway to exploring the Botanic Gardens. The building features rotating art displays and interactive exhibits that highlight the strong relationship between people and plants. On display now is "Seeds of Survival and Celebration," which shares the knowledge, skill, and resilience of enslaved Africans, their descendants, and today's Black community and their deep connections to plants and the cuisines they inspired.

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Pounder Vegetable Garden

This vegetable garden celebrates the long and rich history of people growing their own food, featuring a variety of easy-to-grow plants and sustainable gardening practices. Look for interpretive signs, which highlight the significance of plants to cultures around the world. This garden is home to the Climate Change Garden, which demonstrates how plants are reacting to changing temperatures and precipitation due to climate change, and how people can enact resilient growing practices.

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Mullestein Winter Garden

Ithaca is notorious for its long and blistering winters, and the Winter Garden was curated to provide a space of beauty, color, and gathering amidst these cold months. The one-acre garden features over 700 plants selected for their interesting bark texture, bark color, unusual shape, winter fruit, cones, evergreen foliage, and other characteristics that create a vibrant winter landscape.

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Young Flower Garden

This lush garden showcases flowers that feature prominently in the art, literature, and myths of cultures around the world. The collection of shrubs, perennials, ephemeral bulbs, and annuals create a colorful display that both delights the senses and highlights the symbolic meanings of well-known flowers.The hillside above, the Mullestein Hillside Garden, features plants that stabilize slopes. A path along its length offers a stunning view of the Herb, Flower, and Winter Gardens.

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Robison Herb Garden

People have used plants for culinary, fragrance, and medicinal purposes for thousands of years, and this rich history is celebrated within the Robison Herb Garden. Each of its 17 beds have a unique theme, including Sacred Herbs, Herbs of the Ancients, and Herbs in Literature—highlighting countless ways that cultures around the world have interacted with herbs throughout history. The deep and enduring connection between plants and people is on full display in this vibrant collection.

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Groundcover Collection

Although it first appears to be a sea of green, the Groundcover collection is home to a rich variety of plants. These herbaceous perennials and low-growing shrubs offer a sustainable alternative to traditional lawns, as they spread quickly to crowd out weeds, prevent soil erosion, and provide shelter to birds, insects, and other wildlife. The effect is both cooling and calming, offering visitors a respite during the hot summer months.

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Comstock Knoll

Comstock Knoll is the perfect home for plants that thrive in dappled shade, including azaleas, small flowering trees, hostas, ferns, and the stunning Bowers’ Rhododendron Collection. Originally purchased in 1910 from Cornell professors Anna and John Comstock, the Knoll was intended to serve as an outdoor classroom, and has continued to serve as a space of learning, inspiration, and relaxation for students and other visitors.

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Rock Garden

Layers of native stone provide niches for alpine plants, bulbs, and miniature shrubs. Most are perennials. This garden displays plants adapted to conditions found in alpine and coastal environments, such as dry, marginal soils and sunny and windy habitats. Such adaptations include succulent and/or hairy leaves, and vegetative reproduction.

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Bioswale Garden

Designed to be both functional and attractive, the Bioswale Garden is an excellent example of a nature-based solution to sustainability. The garden was designed to catch rainwater runoff from the nearby road and parking lot so it can be absorbed and recharge groundwater. Plants here can tolerate wet and dry conditions, including native switchgrass, flowering perennials, and a variety of shrubs. The result is a drainage system that is ecologically friendly and visually appealing.From here, continue across the street to explore Conifer Slope, an extensive collection of conifers.

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Conifer Slope

Conifer Slope serves as a living museum of a wide variety of conifers, including firs, cedars, yews, gingkos, junipers, hemlocks, and pines. These cone-bearing trees can be appreciated year round, making the hillside an excellent spot for education, research, and leisurely strolls.

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Kienzle Overlook

This overlook houses part of our conifer collection, featuring dwarf and intermediate-sized conifers selected for their ornamental qualities. The delightful trees and the birds-eye view of the Botanic Gardens create a space ideal for rest and inspiration, and is a perfect stop along the way to the Dairy Bar, just across the road from there.