The Arboretum and State Botanical Garden at the University of Kentucky will get an expanded visitor center and new educational building thanks to a $30 million gift from the Bill Gatton Foundation.
The gift, announced Thursday, will pay for six projects for the arboretum. Those include expanding the visitor center to include an event hall; constructing a new education center with two flex classrooms and an active-learning multipurpose space; an integrated landscape between the visitor center and the education building; a reconfigured entrance and expanded parking lot; walkway improvements; and a new operations maintenance building and a greenhouse off property.
“Today, the Bill Gatton Foundation is making a transformational investment in the arboretum's future,” UK President Eli Capilouto said at a gathering on the grounds. “A $30 million commitment that would help us preserve what makes the arboretum so special and open to new possibilities for discovery, education and connection."
The idea to gift the money for the arboretum comes from an earlier version of the will left by Bill Gatton, a high-profile UK alumni and entrepreneur. That’s according to Danny Dunn, a trustee for the foundation.
“It's obvious that it was important to him that there be parks of various kinds and types, where youth and adults alike could enjoy, play and enjoy nature,” Dunn said. “The added great benefit of the arboretum will be the educational aspect of learning.”
Dunn hopes the additional influx of cash will help preserve the green space, which covers about 100 acres near the Lexington campus.
The new education center will be named after former dean of the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment Scott Smith.
Smith also described the gift as “transformational.” The land the arboretum is on was originally agricultural experiment land for some of the college’s crop research.
“I was truly honored,” Smith said of learning the building will bear his name. “But a thought that came to me very quickly was that this is a very appropriate recognition of the College of Agriculture's place at the arboretum, that the ties between the college and this place go back to way before its beginning.”
Smith, who was dean from 2001 to 2013, said he became the administrator of the arboretum shortly after being named to the dean's post. He told WEKU the naming will continue the legacy of memorializing the role of agriculture in the university’s history.
“I continue to be proud of the college,” Smith said. “I think it continues to be something special in its relationship, not just to the campus, but to the whole state with the extension programs and the farm and ag programs. The ag college is…it's a Kentucky institution, as well as a UK institution.”
Arboretum director Michael Wall said he often receives feedback on what a gem the facility is to the Lexington community. Its mission is to showcase Kentucky’s landscape and be a resource center for education.
Further, Wall said the arboretum hosted at least 75 classes last year and more than 1,300 students.
“The mission of the arboretum is way more multifaceted than that,” Wall said, “and so it isn't just the research and outreach mission that our founders put down on paper, but it's what I like to call the ‘shadow mission’ of the arboretum, that the community has chosen for us in practice over the ensuing decades. And so that's the mission of being the background fabric for the lives of Lexingtonians and beyond.”
Wall said construction is expected to start in 2027 and be finished in about a year, though there is no hard timeline.
