Pictured: The new welcome center at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Photo by Ryan Gamma

Last month, phase one of the Master Plan at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota campus opened to the public. Phase one of the three-phase Master Plan is perhaps the most transformative of all the phases–with the addition of 188,030 square feet of new facilities and amenities to the Downtown Sarasota campus, Selby Gardens has become the world’s first net positive energy botanical garden complex. More than $56 million has been raised for the implementation of the Master Plan, with $51.6 million going toward the capital needs of phase one.

For Selby Gardens’ however, it’s money well spent. Phase one has elevated Selby Gardens into truly one of the preeminent botanical garden complexes in the world, with new facilities that include the Morganroth Family Living Energy Access Facility, which houses parking as well as vertical gardens, a garden-to-plate restaurant and most importantly a nearly 50,000 square foot solar array. Amongst the other improvements which include a new welcome center and a major stormwater management system, is the Steinwachs Family Plant Research Center, a hurricane-resilient structure that is home to organizations’ permanent collections of plants, research laboratories and library.

“When we set out to create the Master Plan there were several key challenges that we wanted to address. The first is that we have the world's best scientifically documented collection of orchids and bromeliads,” says Jennifer Rominiecki, President and CEO of Selby Gardens. “And they have been housed on the ground in the flood zone in aging infrastructure. It was really Hurricane Irma that put an exclamation point on our need to act. Another core challenge was that we could no longer accommodate thousands of visitors who wanted to connect with our mission. The third challenge we wanted to address was preserving our 15 acres of land in the heart of downtown Sarasota– one of the aspects of the Master Plan is codifying those parcels as a botanical garden to prevent it from being broken up for future generations. Lastly, we wanted to address long term fiscal and environmental sustainability.”

Selby Gardens, Downtown Sarasota Campus, 1534 Mound St, Sarasota, 941-366-5731.

Pictured: The new welcome center at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Photo by Ryan Gamma

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