Alice Hand Callaway Visitor Center and Conservatory (State Botanical Garden of Georgia)

The University of Georgia had already owned an earlier botanical garden: founded in 1833 by Dr Malthus Ward on four acres, it closed in 1856 for lack of funds. The present garden was proposed in 1967; the university set the land aside in 1968 and work began in 1970 under the name University of Georgia Botanical Garden. The Callaway Foundation, founded in 1943 by Fuller E. Callaway Jr. and named after his wife Alice Hand Callaway, a lover of flowers and plants, first paid for the headquarters building completed in 1975.

Ground was broken for the visitor centre and its conservatory in September 1982. The 2.6 million dollar building was again funded by the foundation, together with the entrance plaza and fountain. The New Georgia Encyclopedia gives 1984 as the year of completion, while Wikipedia dates the public opening to 1985. Also in 1984, the Georgia General Assembly made the site the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

In November 2018 a further one million dollar gift from the foundation launched a new entrance with a lift, a 2.01 million dollar project meant to make the building easier to reach from the car parks.

The building brings together offices, classrooms, a gift shop, the Garden Room Cafe and a conservatory of 10,000 square feet, about 930 m². Its heart is the Great Room, a large hall under high glass ceilings where the garden's tropical collection grows.

The room can take 200 seated guests or up to 300 standing; with the back patio, the conservatory seats 250, which also makes it a venue for receptions. According to the Southern Garden History Society, the building houses the garden's Porcelain and Decorative Arts Museum. The accessible entrance funded in 2018, fitted with a lift, was meant to ease access for visitors arriving from the car parks. The sources consulted do not name the architect or describe the structure of the glazed roof in any detail.

The conservatory holds the garden's tropical collection. The New Georgia Encyclopedia describes it as centred on tropical plants of economic interest, the Southern Garden History Society mentions a notable collection of tropical and other tender plants, and the state's tourism site speaks of tropical and semi-tropical plants. None of the sources consulted, however, names individual species.

The conservatory also hosts changing art exhibitions on botanical and horticultural themes, as well as concerts and lectures. Outdoors, the Heritage Garden gathers plants that mattered in Georgia's economic and cultural history, and the Alice H. Richards Children's Garden, opened in 2019 on 2.5 acres, includes a pitcher plant bog.

The visitor centre and its conservatory stand at 2450 South Milledge Avenue in Athens, within a property of more than 300 acres, most of it left as natural area. From the centre, a visit continues into the themed gardens, among them the Heritage Garden, the International Garden and the Flower Garden.

The sheltered conservatory can be enjoyed in any season, while the five miles of nature trails into the woods are best walked in spring and autumn. A short walk away, the Day Chapel, completed in 1994, opens onto the surrounding hardwood forest through generous doors and windows. In 2018 the university put the garden's attendance at about 230,000 visitors a year.