By Dr. F. Todd Lasseigne
Executive Director
Season’s Greetings as we look forward to the promise of the New Year, 2024! Bellingrath Gardens & Home has been both humbled and honored by all of the support that we have received throughout 2023, from you our members and Friends and also from the many foundations, businesses, and individuals that have supported and worked with us throughout the year. Year’s end always brings forth considerations of a “Top 10,” and so I’ll indulge with this and have you thinking about all that we’ve done, collectively, to honor the remit that Walter D. Bellingrath gave us – “that the Gardens would serve as a fitting and permanent memorial to (Mrs. Bellingrath’s) artistry and genius.”
1. Although most of you may not think of it much, our Board of Trustees and Board of Directors have done nothing but heroic work through all of 2023, championing Bellingrath Gardens & Home. Our thanks goes to them all, especially our chair, Mr. Preston Bolt, Jr. for his exceptional leadership.
2. The Bellingrath Gardens & Home staff have been, likewise, diligent and resilient in their continuing work to cultivate, maintain, interpret, and support this wonderful cultural jewel and institution. Although changes in staffing have occurred, we are as strong now as we were at the beginning of 2023.
3. Those of you who visit us regularly, and even those who only come once per year, are our lifeblood, and we cannot ever thank you enough for your patronage and continuing appreciation for all that we do.
4. We deeply thank the charitable foundations who have so generously supported us in 2023 – the J.L. Bedsole Foundation, the Crampton Trust, the Hearin-Chandler Foundation, and the Daniel Foundation of Alabama, the A.S. Mitchell Foundation, the Alabama Historical Commission, and the State of Alabama.
5. Our design team – 3.fromme Design of Sanford, Florida, and HDLA of Nashville, Tennessee – has been quietly at work on a visionary master plan for Bellingrath Gardens & Home since March of 2023. Stay tuned for exciting announcements in 2024!
6. Bellingrath Gardens & Home was honored in November at the International Garden Tourism Conference in Victoria, British Columbia as one of only ten gardens “Worth Traveling For in 2024,” and furthermore was the only one in the U.S. to be so honored.
7. A significant capital project was untaken and completed to restore the roof of the Boehm Gallery building at Bellingrath earlier this year. This project entailed removal of the original Ludowici roof tiles, replacing the underlayment with new, modern materials, and then carefully reapplying the Ludowici tiles.
8. Bellingrath Gardens & Home, in partnership with Huntsville Botanical Garden and Birmingham Botanical Gardens, is excited to have launched a full-fledged STEM-based plant science education program – an institutional first for us, and one that is long overdue!
9. Working with Alabama Power, we completed an overhaul of our electric main that supplies power to the entire Bellingrath Garden & Home campus. We now have buried electric mains, which will greatly help us to be more resilient to future storms and adverse weather events.
10. Our Founder, Mr. Walter D. Bellingrath, and his beloved, Mrs. Bessie Morse Bellingrath, together set forth the dream and realization of this place, one that has been so admired by millions of people since it first opened to the public in the spring of 1932. They will always be our benchmark, our highest standard we aspire to, and our guiding light.