Marjorie K. Daugherty Conservatory (Lauritzen Gardens)

An early plan for a botanical garden in Omaha, in the early 1970s, came to nothing. After the Des Moines Botanical Center opened, Omaha Botanical Center Inc. announced in 1982 the creation of a garden on a site in the south of the city, a former dump cleared in 1981. The garden opened in April 1994 as the Omaha Botanical Gardens. Its visitor centre, designed by HDR and Christner, opened in 2001 with a floral display hall, and the institution took the name Lauritzen Gardens in honour of the Lauritzen family.

A conservatory was part of the founders' vision from the early 1980s and became a permanent element of the master plan in 1996. Led by a gift from the Robert B. Daugherty Foundation, which named it after Marjorie K. Daugherty, it opened on Saturday 11 October 2014. The opening press release put the project at 31.2 million dollars, whereas Wikipedia and the Omaha World-Herald refer to a 20-million-dollar conservatory.

The team brought together HDR (architecture and engineering), CG Studios (landscape architecture), Rough Brothers (conservatory consultants), the general contractor Kiewit and Heritage Services as project administrator. Closed from May 2024 for nearly a year and a half, the conservatory underwent an 11.3-million-dollar programme in two phases, the first devoted to its technical systems. It reopened on 20 September 2025 with reorganised collections.

The addition covers almost 20,000 square feet, of which 17,500 (≈1,625 m²) are given over to plant displays: a 10,000-square-foot (≈930 m²) tropical house, a 5,300-square-foot (≈490 m²) temperate house and a 2,000-square-foot (≈185 m²) gallery for floral shows and events. Some 12,000 glass panels make up the envelope.

The building follows the slope of the site: a twenty-foot (≈6 m) change in level separates the entrance from the northern end, which looks out over the Missouri River valley. The temperate house borrows its plants and architectural setting from the gardens of Charleston and Savannah; the conservatory also includes a ten-foot (≈3 m) waterfall and a large pool of exotic water plants.

The 2024-2025 renovation focused on equipment: larger fans, new shade cloths, LED lighting and an Argus climate-control system, together with sensors, renewed planting soils, pathways redesigned to ease visitor flow and an additional overlook.

Since the 2025 reopening, the beds have been divided into nine regions, from the deserts of California to the tropics of Southeast Asia, including a Sonoran Desert section. Featured specimens include the cannonball tree, gumbo limbo, rose of Venezuela, Joey palm and a baobab.

Several new features came with the reorganisation: an overhead plant chandelier with two tiers of hanging spheres of orchids, anthurium and moss; a plant library of lantern-shaped hanging terrariums; and a display wall for the garden's collection of staghorn ferns, mounted high in the tropical house. Dedicated spaces hold tropical pitcher plants, hoyas, pelargoniums and ferns.

The conservatory is part of Lauritzen Gardens, at 100 Bancroft Street in south Omaha, close to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, whose Desert Dome and Lied Jungle also appear in this atlas. An hour is enough for the two houses and the gallery, whose floral displays change through the year.

The rest of the 100-acre garden invites a longer walk: a woodland trail through a century-old bur oak forest, a model railroad garden opened in 2007, Sofia's Play Garden, opened in 2025, and the floral display hall in the visitor centre.