This website has one purpose – to view all plants in the Van Landingham Glen, (the Glen), of the UNCC Botanical Gardens. This woodland section of the gardens holds a collection of rhododendrons and native plants of the Carolinas. The gardens are located on the campus of The University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and were founded by Dr. Herbert Hechenbleikner in 1966.
There is a second native plants garden in another section of the UNCC Gardens, the Mellichamp Native Terrace Garden, founded in 2015 and named for Dr. Larry Mellichamp and his wife, Audrey. Dr. Mellichamp is the retired director of the Botanical Gardens and it was the author’s privilege to work under his direction in the Glen for more than twenty years. Many of the plants in the Glen database are described in Dr. Mellichamp’s book, “Native Plants of the Southeast”, published in 2014 by Timber Press. The Mellichamp Native Terrace Garden shows plants in a home-landscaping style, with somewhat different objectives than the Glen. This website does not include plants from the Native Terrace Garden.
The author likes to compare the Glen to a similar woodland garden in New England, known as the “Garden in the Woods”, near Framingham, Massachusetts. The statement on their website is as follows:
“Our public botanic garden displays native New England plants in a naturalistic setting.”
This is the home of the New England Wildflower Society. The Glen is more modest in scale and, unlike the New England garden, there is no charge for admission. The Glen does have a wide variety of wildflowers and ferns, mixed in with the native trees and shrubs.
You are invited to visit the website of the UNCC Botanical Gardens for more details: UNCC Gardens