FRBC Collector's Garden  

The Project:
We are currently building a new shade Collector’s Garden for strictly FRBC plants, which will be used for display, education, comparative research, and propagation. The Collector’s Garden will be an intimate room enclosed within a very large lath structure, housing detailed plantings of extraordinary and rare FRBC plants, including our many ferns of wild provenance. The Collector’s Garden will be a necessary setting for growing and displaying our extensive collections of selected key genera which is essential for these to be recognized as a Nationally Accredited Plant Collection.

The Soil:
The plants in this will be growing in our native soil amended with 130 yds of various materials such as bark, sand, and compost, but most excitingly 30 tons of fine basalt chips and flour. Recent research has pointed to the use of powdered basalt as an effective modality for carbon sequestration. For example, an August 2021 article in PhysicsWorld posits that use of this in agriculture and forestry applications could remove tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide in rainwater reacts with the basalt to form bicarbonate, which prevents the carbon from reentering the atmosphere.

This has been and continues to be an expensive project, and we need your help to pull it off. The overhead lath structure and irrigation have both been installed, and the side walls remain to be constructed. Once that is done, we will need plenty of staff and volunteer labor to create pathways, grow beds, and finally plant out the actual specimens themselves.