Place Post: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Entrance to the Center

       Lady Bird Johnson, a graduate from the University of Texas, Austin as well as First Lady during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, made many significant attributions in the improvement of Austin, during her time here.  As a huge nature advocate, she founded the Wildflower Center in 1982 as a way to maintain the sustainability of the natural environment as well as become a source of education for people to visit and realize the importance of the preservation of nature.  As I briefly knew about the huge role Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, played in Austin, as both a high school and a library are named after Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as town lake recently renamed after Lady Bird; I wanted to check out the Wildflower Center that Lady Bird established.
   

View from the tower

        The Center, located in South Austin off of mopac, testifies to the beauty of nature that Lady Bird wanted to preserve.  Her main goal was to leave a place future generations could appreciate.  When I first arrived at the center, I was directed to the gift shop where admission is $7 for students.  Although I thought that price was a little ridiculous, as I could find a lot of similar plants and flowers in my backyard, in my mom's garden, I felt it was worthwhile to denote to a good cause.  The first place I went was a tower that, at the top, let you see a beautiful scenic view of the uninhibited landscape surrounding the center, a view many people don't see often today.  After climbing back down I went through a woodland garden that had a stream running through it.  It had a very tranquil and relaxing feel to it, with benches situated in different parts of the garden.  After walking through this shaded garden, there was another garden, that was less wild and arranged in orderly, square pot beds.  Every bed had a different theme to it, whether it was plants common to the West desert of Texas, a fiber and dye garden, a healing garden, a salvia garden as well as many other variations of plants.  Beyond that, was a butterfly garden.  Unlike the typical butterfly garden, which are usually enclosed butterfly "houses" this was an outdoor butterfly habitat.  The ability for an outdoor butterfly garden to exist  amazed me, as I wondered what it took to attract the butterflies and keep them in the area. I found out from various signs throughout the garden that it contained 300 different plant species arranged in specific plant habitats, creating a healthy ecosystem for the butterflies.  I also learned the main reason an outdoor garden was built was to teach visitors how they could build a similar habitat in their own backyard, that would attract butterflies, just by the correct arrangement of plants in a garden.

        My experience at Lady Bird Johnson's Wildflower Center was very positive, as I think there should be more places that educate a range of ages on the significance of being more environmentally friendly.  Just as Lady Bird realized during her time in Austin, the type of beauty found at the Wildflower Center cannot sustain forever unless more measures are taken to reduce the amount of destruction we are doing to our natural landscape.