University of Wisconsin’s Allen Centennial Garden is in full bloom and ready for master renovations, which will create an iconic scenery for students and the community to gather and interact with their surroundings.
To kickstart the spring season and renovations, Ben Futa, garden director, said he and his colleagues created a spring and summer calendar booked with events. The activities include visits from therapy dogs, a food truck event that uses produce grown in the garden and an event called Unplugged Study Time for students to prepare for finals.
The two-acre Allen Centennial Garden was originally created in 1989 as the teaching gardens for the horticulture department in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Futa said.
These events were created to reach a wider audience and let them know that this garden is not only for the horticulture department, but also for the entire campus and community, Futa said.
“When I arrived, we were sort of described as the best-kept secret or hidden gem,” Futa said.“I said, ‘no, we are going to do away with that.’”
The garden’s upcoming events are meant to show off the campus master plan’s sustainable and eco-friendly renovations, Futa said. The garden models the sustainable and environmentally-friendly landscape management practices. It involves using minimal chemicals or pesticides, organic pest management and reducing reliance on gas-fire equipment by using man-powered mowers, Futa said.
These eco-friendly methods will also be applied to the two new garden spaces that will open mid-summer. This involves prioritizing measures to ensure the gardens rely less on artificial water, manage storm run-off water more efficiently and create a strong lighting experience, Futa said.
“The master plan will address things like making sure we have adequate power hooked up for special events and lighting for evening,” Futa said. “The plan will address the infrastructure we need to make sure those things happen. I would like to see a very strong lighting experience that is magical.”
The upcoming month of May will mark the one year anniversary of Futa’s work here at UW. After six years in the public design market, he decided to become the Allen Centennial Garden director. He is involved with every stage of development for the garden, Futa said, through hands-on work and instructions to students.
Driving more audiences to the garden and letting people know they can come visit anytime is one of Futa’s goals.
“We want to bring the garden to the UW-Madison experience just as much as sitting at the Terrace at Memorial Union or having any of those other iconic UW experiences,” Futa said. “When you’re a UW student, we want you to think, ‘I spend time at the Union, but I also spend time at this garden.’ We want it to be a lot of different things to many different people.”
