Mundy Wildflower Garden Preview

Welcome to the Mundy Wildflower Garden. The plants along this pathway show creative ways to showcase native wildflowers in gardens exposed to full sun. Follow this path and staircase down into a quiet woodland along Fall Creek.

On this tour you will find a remarkable variety of plants native to the Cayuga Lake Basin. This preserve contains forested slopes, floodplain forests, wetland meadows, and displays of native plant landscaping, all bordering a scenic section of Fall Creek. To guide your plant discovery, you will find labels next to over 200 native plant species as well as photographs and lists of the season's flowering plants at a display near the entrance.

This area’s forested slopes, floodplain forest, wetland, meadow, seeps, and stream banks allow for a rich variety of plants to grow in this 15-acre preserve. The soil of the forest floor is exceptionally high in nutrients carried by rainwater flowing from the forested slopes. The path of Fall Creek once followed the base of these “bowl-shaped” hillsides before finding its current path. The slight depression left by the old path of the creek, called a meander scar, is home to wetland species such as skunk cabbage (pictured) and marsh marigold (pictured). The loose soil on the hillsides, primarily glacial deposits, is ideal for fox to make their dens.

A large deer population poses a big challenge to conserving this garden’s plant diversity. In an effort to restore what naturally grows here, we constructed the fence next to this path to protect newly planted species from deer. The plants were grown at Cornell Botanic Gardens using locally collected wild seeds. Trees include red oak, white oak, shagbark hickory, black birch, and flowering dogwood. Shrubs include witch hazel and maple leaf viburnum. Herbaceous plants include blue stem goldenrod, white wood aster, and wild ryes.

This stone honors Muriel Mundy, who recognized the value of this rich collection of native plants and provided funding in 1963 to protect and manage this garden.

The dominant trees growing here are tolerant of periodic flooding from Fall Creek and include sycamore (pictured), sugar maple, white ash (pictured), bitternut hickory, and basswood. This section of the garden has an exceptionally rich composition of plants because it has been much less disturbed by human activity than other areas surrounding this woodland.

This area is periodically mowed to maintain this meadow, used by Cornell classes to study this plant here. Common meadow plants include cow parsnip, European parsnip and angelica (shown here). Take the spur trail here for easy access to Fall Creek and explore aquatic insects and other stream life.

The plants growing along this stabilization wall are part of a restoration project. The gravelly, dry, and low-nutrient conditions are challenging for plants to grow, but typical of streambanks. This area was once covered with invasive crown vetch, which crowded out native plants. After the vetch, soil, and associated seedbank were removed and the stabilization structures repaired, native plants were carefully selected to provide a variety of textures, shapes and colors throughout the growing season while also stabilizing the slope.

Updated by dedicated volunteers, this “bloom board” is your field guide for identifying plants in bloom throughout the growing season. For over thirty years, volunteers and staff have been recording when wildflowers first bloom, also known as phenology, which is now helping researchers understand the effects of climate change.

In early spring, this woodland is covered with dozens of species of delicate ephemeral wildflowers including white trillium, trout lily, and hepatica. These plants develop flowers and complete their life cycle in early spring to absorb as much sunlight as they can before the trees above grow leaves. The sun’s energy is stored and used to develop seeds and fruit. During this time of year, all local third graders learn about the life cycle of a plant through visiting this garden to identify and learn about spring wildflowers.

The rich plant communities here are often used for research. This weather station is helping Cornell researchers better understand how climate change is affecting plants. By knowing the exact exposure plants here have to temperature, relative humidity, and moisture, researchers can look into which plants are responding to climate trends, why some are sensitive to temperature, and some are not. They can also look into how climate change impacts plant development and how that is affecting wildlife that depend on them.

Throughout the garden, you may see colored flags like the one across from this weather station, which mark research plots. Botanic Gardens staff conduct on-going research here and in other natural areas to understand how deer affect the health of plant communities.

This large fence protects 8 of the garden’s 15-acres from deer. Before the fence was installed in 2008, native wildflowers, ferns, shrubs and tree seedlings were disappearing due to heavy deer browse. Now you can easily compare how much more plant cover and diversity there is inside vs. outside the fence.

The large granite boulder just off the trail and the much larger one in the creek bed were carried here from Canada during the last ice age over 15,000 years ago. Large ice sheets over a mile thick slowly moved south to cover much of New York State. As these glaciers melted they released rocks and debris, which buried many stream valleys including the valley surrounding Fall Creek. The bowl-shaped slope surrounding this woodland was carved by Fall Creek as it eroded through the glacial debris that filled its valley.

Beginning in 2009 and continuing today, this area was planted to demonstrate how well these native plants thrive and how it performs as a replacement for traditional lawns. Walk on it to see for yourself! Visit the interpretive panel just ahead on this trail for more information on this project.

Near this lawn you will see a building, which are offices for the Cornell Botanic Garden Horticultural staff. Our dedicated staff are invaluable in carrying out our vision of connecting plants and peoples for a world of diversity, beauty and hope.

You are at the eastern entrance to the Wildflower Garden where we are demonstrating more creative ways to display native plants in your home landscapes. We have selected a mix of plants to offer blooms throughout the growing season. From here you can cross Caldwell Road to reach the 100-acre F. R. Newman Arboretum to explore 11 tree collections and dozens of specialty gardens.