Juniper Level Botanic Gardens
Juniper Level Botanic Gardens (28+ acres) was established in 1988 by Tony Avent and his late wife Michelle as a privately owned botanical garden at 9241 Sauls Road, Raleigh, North Carolina. The botanic garden is open eight weekends per year; visits at other times must be scheduled in advance with the garden's owners or garden staff. The Center for Mindfulness and Nonduality at JLBG, established by Anita Avent in 2013, offers nonduality retreats, mindfulness meditation classes, and individual and group self-inquiry sessions for those exploring and seeking a fundamental shift in perception by meditating on the deeper questions of the nature of the assumed personal self and external reality. The botanic gardens radiate a quiet wisdom which point directly to the ineffable, invisible, and intelligent aware presence that every spiritual tradition calls the Absolute.
In addition to the display gardens, the botanic garden is also home to a large horticultural research facility in The USDA Zone 7b climate with over 25,000 different plants. The mission of the botanic gardens is to promote and preserve botanical diversity by bridging the gap between botany and horticulture and to explore the lenses of perception which influence identity, beliefs, thoughts, and proximity.
The garden is an ex-situ plant conservation site that supports botanical plant exploration, both in the US and abroad, study, identification, and educational outreach, followed by selection, breeding, and propagation. The final step, in conjunction with Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. is to make these new and rare perennial plants available for both shade gardens and sun gardens around the world. Fifteen percent of the plant sales revenue from Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. funds the research and daily maintenance of the botanic garden.
The garden is focused on conservation plant collections and trials integrated with plant design. It contains several significant features including two man-made waterfall/grottos, a recirculating stream, and a 300' long crevice garden made from recycled concrete, that was completed in 2018. The property contains three houses, two of which are used for offices/classes, and a third used as a private residence. The private residence will not be open to visitors, but will be available for visitation during selected endowment fundraising activities.
No synthetic non-organic fertilizers have been used in the garden since 1988, and all runoff (outside of hurricanes) is captured on-site through a series of rain gardens and recirculating runoff collection systems. A large on-site composting program supplies nutrients and compost for the gardens.
In 2018, the Avents gifted Juniper Level Botanic Gardens to N.C. State University, while retaining lifetime rights. JLBG will become a sister institution to the J.C. Raulston Arboretum. A non-profit 501-C-3 endowment has been set up at NC State, and fundraising is underway for the needed multi-million dollar operational endowment, of which only the interest can be used. The Southeastern Plant Symposium to be held in June of each year was begun in 2019 as a joint fundraiser for both the Juniper Level Botanic Garden and the J.C. Raulston Arboretum. Also in 2019, both gardens joined forces to produce an International recognized Index Seminum.
Juniper Level Botanic Gardens has been offering educational classes since the late 1980s as part of the garden's mission as a scientific, education, and research-based botanic garden. The garden aims to raise awareness of the horticultural and gardening mis-information offered by well-meaning garden speakers and writers, from plant adaptability to soils and fertilizers.
The garden's horticultural classes, under the direction of plantsman and horticulturist Tony Avent, share how the garden's research has differed many times over the last 30 years from conventional gardening "wisdom." Since 2013 Anita Avent has been sharing the philosophy and wellness benefits of unfiltered perception of consciousness. Anita Avent, a mindfulness and nonduality facilitator and writer, leads intimate self-inquiry sessions, garden retreats, and mindfulness workshops at the Center for Mindfulness and Nonduality at Juniper Level Botanic Gardens to examine the various lenses of perception.
The garden currently contains over 25,000 plants, with extensive collections of Agapanthus, Agave, Amorphophallus, Arisaema, Arum, Asarum, Baptisia, Colocasia and allied genera, Crinum, Epimedium, ferns, Hedychium, hardy palms, Hosta, Kniphofia, Ophiopogon, ornamental grasses, Polygonatum and allied genera, Rohdea, Salvia, and Zephyranthes.
The garden's research programs include hosta breeding, Aroid (Araceae) identification and culture, and nearly 100 field expeditions to Argentina (2002), Arizona (2004), The Balkans (2012), China (1996), Crete (2010), Ecuador (2002), England (1994), Hawaii (2002), the Netherlands (2004), Korea (1997), Mexico (1994), South Africa (2005), Texas (1998, 1999, 2000), Thailand (1999, 2002, 2005), Taiwan (2008), and the Southeastern United States (25 trips since 1995).