SC Botanical Garden: Endangered Plants

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. At the South Carolina Botanical Garden, the goal is not just to offer visitors a rich experience in seeing a wide panoply of native and introduced plants that grow in three hundred acres which duplicate ecosystems from across the state, but they also preserve and protect endangered plants. As our state is losing open land at an alarming rate, protection of rare, endangered, and site-specific plants is of critical importance. The new director of the garden, Martin Hamilton, has a background in this field and is working with other institutions to provide the care and expertise and seed collections to ensure that we have the genetic material to safeguard our ecosystems in the future. This of course includes plants that support pollinators and are larval food host plants. All this combined with beauty to lift our souls.