Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory

The Atlanta Botanical Garden grew out of a civic proposal made in 1973 for a botanical garden for the city. It was incorporated in 1976 beside Piedmont Park in Midtown, and Bill Warner became its first executive director in 1977.

The conservatory was made possible by the businessman J. B. Fuqua, who gave $5.5 million in 1987 to build it and named it in honour of his wife, Dorothy Chapman Fuqua. A second capital campaign raised $6.4 million, and the Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory opened in 1989 with a twofold aim: to show the botanical richness of selected tropical and desert regions and to teach visitors about conservation and the uses of plants.

In 2002 the garden opened the Fuqua Orchid Center, which also housed a centre for conservation and education. The grounds kept growing around the glasshouses: the Canopy Walk, an edible garden and the Cascades Garden, all completed in 2010, nearly doubled the garden’s size; the Skyline Garden followed in 2017 and the Southeastern Center for Conservation in 2019.

The conservatory covers about 16,000 square feet (some 1,500 m²) and is divided into several spaces: an entrance lobby, the Tropical Rotunda, the Orangerie, the Desert House and a gallery for changing exhibits. Sensors continuously monitor light, humidity and temperature and drive motorised vents, while heating, hand-watering and occasional organic pest control complete the routine. The Desert House is kept deliberately mild, around 68–72°F by day and 60°F at night.

The Fuqua Orchid Center, opened in 2002, pairs two display houses tuned to different altitudes: the Tropical High Elevation House recreates conditions found between 4,000 and 10,000 feet, while the Orchid Display House holds plants from sea level up to about 6,000 feet. An atrium hosts rotating displays, and a conservation greenhouse and laboratories, closed to the public, can be seen through windows.

The Tropical Rotunda holds hundreds of species from Central America, Mexico, Africa and Southeast Asia, including 170 of the world’s roughly 2,600 palm species; among them are the sealing wax palm and Pelagodoxa henryana, which survives in fewer than a dozen wild populations. Coquí frogs, phantasmal poison frogs and an alligator snapping turtle in the waterfall pond live among the plants. The Orangerie shows useful plants grown for food, medicine and industry, while the cactus-free Desert House is devoted to succulents from Madagascar and southern Africa: euphorbias, aloes, haworthias, desert roses, pachypodiums, Madagascar periwinkle and Welwitschia. The Orchid Center holds more than 2,000 species in over 200 genera, with notable groups of Madagascan orchids, Asian slipper orchids and species pollinated by euglossine bees, along with bromeliads and carnivorous plants.

The conservatory sits at the heart of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, next to Piedmont Park. Together with the neighbouring Fuqua Orchid Center it forms an indoor circuit that works well on a cold or rainy day. Each spring the Orchid Daze exhibition puts orchids centre stage, and at the end of the year the Orchid Center is transformed for the garden’s after-dark Garden Lights, Holiday Nights. A visit pairs naturally with the Canopy Walk through the treetops and with the outdoor gardens, from the Cascades Garden to the edible garden.