Get It Growing for 04/03/26

At the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden in Baton Rouge, senior landscape manager Jason Stagg and his colleagues have been busy lately with an expansive, exciting project: planning, and planting, the landscape for the soon-to-be-opened welcome center.

The facility will serve as a central information hub for visitors to the entire Burden Museum & Gardens complex, which also includes LSU’s Rural Life Museum and Windrush Gardens. It will be available for event rentals, too.

All of that is to say the landscape surrounding this building will have plenty of eyes on it, creating a first impression for guests — so, of course, it needs to look attractive and inviting. But Stagg and the Burden team are taking it a step further, using the project as an opportunity to spotlight interesting, functional plants.

“This landscape is a teaching landscape,” Stagg said. “We’re using 100% native plant material for the entire landscape. Because a lot of this site is actually in a bottomland hardwood area, we’ve chosen wetland plants and used them in rain garden and bioswale installations to manage water.”

Many plants that are native to Louisiana thrive in soggy conditions, making them outstanding choices for low-lying settings like where the new welcome center sits. They excel at soaking up rainwater and reducing runoff and flooding.

As a bonus, native plants are tough, handling Louisiana’s challenging climate with ease. And they have striking aesthetics.

“When you take these out of nature, you get some really cool architectural features that you see when you mass them in front of a modern building,” Stagg said.

One of the core components of the welcome center landscape is dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor).

You’ve likely seen this plant — which resembles a short, fanlike palm — growing as an understory in wetland and bottomland areas along roadsides. Because it’s evergreen, dwarf palmetto stands out in the winter when deciduous trees are bare.

“This plant is super, super tough,” Stagg said. “The stalk, or trunk, actually grows underground, meaning that this plant never gets tall, but you still get the wonderful palm fronds. It also can tolerate a lot of wetness.”

Dwarf palmetto’s deep root system also makes it a champ at fighting soil erosion.

The landscape also features two kinds of rush, a grasslike plant that’s sometimes referred to as juncus. Stagg likes the vibrant green of common rush (Juncus effusus) intermingled with the blue tinge of Blue Dart rush (Juncus tenuis).

Both species have fine stems reminiscent of grass blades and are evergreen during typical Louisiana winters. Their spikey appearance lends a unique look to the landscape.

“Another great quality about these juncus or rush plants is that they’re clump forming, so they’re not going to spread wildly or become messy or grow out of bounds,” Stagg said. “They’ll always maintain a neat shape, just like ornamental grasses we use in the landscape.”

These plants are being combined with native trees and shrubs — including pond cypress, Southern magnolia, black gum, yaupon holly, dwarf wax myrtle, American beautyberry and buttonbush.

“All of these wonderful native plants are going to come together in a landscape that will show people how to use plant material to help absorb and survive some of these big rainfall inundation events,” Stagg said.

LSU AgCenter horticulturist Jason Stagg talks about the plants being used in the landscape at the new Burden Museum & Gardens welcome center.

The teaching landscape at the new Burden Museum & Gardens welcome center is made up entirely of native plants. It’s designed to manage stormwater on the property while showing off beautiful, functional native plants. Photo by Olivia McClure/LSU AgCenter

Dwarf palmetto is an evergreen plant with a deep root system and unique, fanlike aesthetics. Photo by Olivia McClure/LSU AgCenter

Common rush is a tough, grasslike plant. Photo by Olivia McClure/LSU AgCenter

As its name suggests, Blue Dart rush has a blue tinge. Photo by Olivia McClure/LSU AgCenter