A place for refreshment and a place to learn — the Bette S. Walker Discovery Garden at the Hillsborough County Extension office is a sort of flora theme park. Visitors can browse areas with easy-to-grow plants and others with plants that thrive in water. There's be a sensory “garden within the garden” and another area designed for wildlife.
Plants are arranged in raised beds, on trellises, in containers and in the ground: pineapple guava, Chickasaw plum, blue flag iris, golden goddess bamboo.
Throughout, various mulches demonstrate their ability to suffocate weeds and conserve water. They include pine straw, pine bark, eucalyptus, melaleuca and rubber.
Visitors can examine watering methods, get ideas for creating paths and see how features such as a bridge or a stage can enhance a garden.

The garden was named for Bette Walker because it was sowed with her retirement gift from Tampa Bay Wholesale Growers. The association had promised to establish a garden in her honor when she stepped down as executive director in 1997, and the extension office courtyard seemed a perfect spot.

People drop by the office all the time with questions about shrubs, trees and other garden and landscape plants, Walker says. The Discovery Garden can help answer those questions in a meaningful way.

“This was a flat piece of nothing when we started,” says Lynn Barber, garden manager.
The work has involved ripping out sidewalks, yanking plants, pouring concrete footers, erecting a pergola, digging ponds and laying pavers.
Pulling It All Together Financing has come from many agencies. “It’s been one grant after another,” Brown says.
Before work could begin, the drainage had to be fixed. The roof had 16 eight-inch downspouts that funneled rain straight into the courtyard.
“Every time it rained, you can imagine, this was just a lake,” Brown says.
There wasn’t money to fix it, so Brown went to the Hillsborough County water department and asked if fines collected for watering violations could finance a project to capture the runoff and reuse it in the garden.

The county water department and facilities and maintenance department chipped in to help pay more than $40,000 in drainage costs.
The service’s master gardeners, volunteers who have passed a rigorous horticulture course, pitched in, as well. Dave Thorpe, a retired structural engineer, applied the landscape architect’s plans. Jim Hawk, a skilled carpenter, helped build the pergola and stage. Bob Williamson provided a lot of muscle, including building a retention wall.
Jo Anne Whale helped choose the public art and has been busy planting.
It’s all been a labor of love, she says.
“Don’t ask me to go clothes-shopping. Don’t ask me to play bridge,” she says. “But ask me to dig in dirt. This is what I love.”

FOR MORE  INFORMATION: (813) 744-5519, Ext. 7;
 www.hillsborough.extension.ufl.edu