The staff and volunteers who care for the Mizzou Botanic Garden are always happy to hear from our many visitors. These visitors ask a number of excellent questions about the gardens and their care throughout the year. We’ve included some of the more frequently covered topics in this section.
If you have a question pertaining to the Mizzou Botanic Garden, you can email us at garden@missouri.edu
Yes. Send an email to garden@missouri.edu with a detailed description of the location and any other information that would help our staff located and identify the plant. We will consult with the appropriate professional staff and get back to you.
We use only the minimum amounts of fertilizer tailored to the crop, whether it’s turf, trees or flower beds. The type varies according to need and availability. For pest control, we follow the least toxic approach known as Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. IPM is defined as: A broad, multidisciplinary, systematic approach to controlling all pests. All types of control methods — biological, cultural, regulatory, physical and chemical — are used. Use of IPM strategies should result in efficient and economical suppression of pests with a minimum effect on non-target organisms and the environment. IPM is based on understanding the plants to be protected and the pests to be controlled. It is intended to be the least toxic and most environmentally friendly approach.
We have limited greenhouse space that we rent from the Horticulture Department. It is used primarily for carrying over tender plants. We purchase almost all the plants used on campus — including trees, shrubs, groundcovers, bulbs and annuals — from outside vendors, with most plants coming from within Missouri.
Yes. Although most grass clippings are allowed to fall back onto the lawns to decompose and return their nutrients to the lawn, we occasionally collect clippings when they are too long or too wet. We mix these with leaves — also collected on campus — wood chips and waste soil to create large compost piles. Once the compost is completed, we use it in flower beds as either mulch or a soil amendment.
Please fill out our Tribute Intake Form and a member of our staff will reach out to you.
Horticulture students occasionally participate in planting and maintenance activities. Student employees participate in all department planting and maintenance activities.
The MU campus is accessible via its sidewalks and drives and within its buildings. Almost all of the gardens are closely visible from adjacent hard-surfaced walks.
We estimate that in an average year we will plant between 600 and 1,000 new trees and shrubs. We also plant many new herbaceous perennials annually. We plant several thousand annual flowers each year to provide excellent summer and fall flowering on campus.
The largest tree on campus is the Pin Oak just north of Schlundt Hall.
For woody plants, the planning is continuous throughout the year, depending on the number of new projects and their projected completion dates. We place a large order for trees, shrubs and perennials twice a year based on known projects. Our annual flowers are ordered in late fall to give our vendors time to produce the desired cultivars in the quantities we need. Additionally, we acquire plants throughout the growing season to replace dead plants or to solve immediate landscaping problems.
Almost all of the plants on campus are obtained from commercial sources, so it is unlikely that we have many unique or “one of a kind” plants on the campus. However, just east of the Chemistry Building stands a selection of our native persimmon tree with fruits nearly twice as large as the usual fruit on persimmon. Although the history of this plant is unknown, we believe that a horticulture professor of the past found this tree and introduced it to the campus. It is likely to be “one of a kind.”
No. Although we use as many native species as possible, most of the plants on campus are native to other areas of North America and the rest of the world, primarily Europe and northern Asia . We do, however, pay close attention to the potential invasiveness of plants newly introduced to our campus landscape.
Yes, there are several distinct garden areas that have been sponsored by individuals, families, groups of employees, and campus service and honorary organizations. There are many opportunities for sponsoring and naming garden areas.