Besides hearing volumes about history from a local perspective, the Bulloch County Historical Society sometimes gets a glimpse of proposed or envisioned future developments. That happened Monday, near the end of a presentation by Todd Beasley, Ed.D., director of the Botanic Garden at Georgia Southern University.

Within a talk entitled "Deep Roots, Bright Blooms: Growing from the Past," he first provided insights into the history of plant collecting and horticulture forward from the late 1700s, with suggestions of how Bulloch County farmer and self-taught naturalist Daniel Edgar Bland (1894–1985) may have been inspired to start a collection of living trees, shrubs and other perennials on his farm that, through a bequest of Dan and Catharine Bland, grew to be the Botanic Garden, with the family homestead, Bland Cottage, at its heart. Beasley, with apparently encyclopedic knowledge of popular-name to scientific-name associations, then talked about plants now found at the garden, with particular emphasis on "heirloom," "pass-along" and "old-fashioned" species or varieties.

Toward the conclusion of his remarks, he circled back to talk about the evolving mission of a botanic garden in a community that still has connections with what, until now, has been a truly agricultural landscape.

"But we're losing that connection at a rapid pace. …," Beasley said. "I'm not against development, but we're losing a ton of critical, beautiful land to rapid development in sometimes what we might say is maybe not the best sustainable manner.

"So we have to think about the sustainability aspect and how this has a domino consequence on our youth today, the critical people who we want to have in a botanic garden to collect plants just like Dan Bland did. We can't do that if they're an indoor society," he continued. "The way that we develop these days is pushing more and more people to have indoor livelihoods versus this connection to the outdoors."

'Nothing to do …'

Often children today, when told to go outside and play, say, "There's nothing to do out there," lamented the Botanic Garden at GS director, who is officially an employee of the university's College of Science and Math, while the Botanic Garden is an outreach center.

"But we still have a need for plants," he said. "Every single culture, and cultures within culture, has a direct and indirect connection to plants, so we have to somehow get that interest back into our students today."

Beasley's doctorate, an Ed.D., you may have noticed, is in education. On the hopeful side, this teacher talked about a girl named Weatherly who from ages 4 or 5 to 10 years old has been experimenting with planting seeds from school lunch and storebought apples to grow apple trees and learning from failure and successes. 

"The point is, somebody connected her to that interest in the outdoors. …," Beasley said.

People and plants

"When you think about what we do at the Botanic Garden, our mission is to connect people to place and time with plants," he said. "Every single botanic garden in this country has a mission to connect people to plants, and for us it's connecting people to native plants and that old, heirloom style of gardening. … We want people to collect plants. We want the next stewards of the environment connected to plants."

The Botanic Garden at Georgia Southern hosts events and educational programs, "passive and active opportunities," he said. "How much more intriguing, though, must we go to capture the next generation?"

Then Beasley noted that the Botanic Garden lacks an enclosed, environmentally controlled building for events and large classes, which he said limits education time to mostly spring and fall.

The garden includes the small Bland Cottage and also "a beautiful wooden, heirloom pavilion," as he described it. Of course, the pavilion, being a pavilion, has sides open to the elements.

"But imagine if we had the capability to connect audiences to plants for the purpose of collecting plants and getting interested in horticulture. What if we had a fully enclosed building where we could do education year round?" Beasley said.

Evergreen Center

When the Botanic Garden's leadership first thought about this, their original concept was for an-all glass structure. But they soon realized there would be no way to adequately cool it for comfort in the summertime, he said.

So the current proposal, still evolving, is for a wood and glass structure.

"These are just concepts right now," he said, advancing through photo illustrations in his slide show. "We don't have a full design going on yet, but we're starting to think about what this facility looks like as we launch this campaign. So we definitely want it to be wood, we definitely want it to be glass so that you can look out into the garden and really be inspired, be connected."

With the working title Evergreen Education and Events Center, the project has been approved by the university for fundraising by the Georgia Southern University Foundation. It is envisioned as a 2,500-square-foot facility costing about $3.5 million, he said after Historical Society presentation. Director at the Georgia Southern Botanic Garden since January 2024, Beasley has more than 25 years experience in horticulture and education. He grew up in North Augusta, South Carolina, but his father was originally from Bulloch County.

One of Beasley's previous workplaces was the San Antonio Botanical Gardens in Texas, which he mentioned while explaining to the Historical Society what the proposed new facility here may include.

"We don't want just an education and event facility," he said. "We want something else to really, really capture that … farm-to-life, farm-to-table inspirational living," he said. "So we're thinking about this facility as an education center first, with a teaching kitchen. We opened one at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, and within six months it increased our revenue by almost 40%."

The Botanic Garden at GS functions as a nonprofit organization with memberships, and accepts donations and memorial gifts. Visit its webpage here, or its Facebook page here. Upcoming events include "The Garden Uncorked" wine tasting, May 8, 5:30–8 p.m. (see the Facebook page for more info), and a "Garden and Grow" program and meal later in May. For more info, call (912) 478-1149.