For Immediate Release
Contact: Julianne McGuinness, (907) 562-7010

Anchorage –  Note: This news was released by Alaska Botanical Garden and shared here.Alaskans and visitors have a new reason to visit the Alaska Botanical Garden – Lile’s Garden. The newly named garden features perennials, shrubs, bulbs and the garden’s first fruit trees. It’s located at 4601 Campbell Airstrip Road, and includes more than 75 different perennials, as well as a Gold Medal Peony Collection.

Lile’s Garden is named in memory of Lile Vivian Bernard Rasmuson, the late wife of Elmer Rasmuson, who was an avid gardener in the 1940s and 50s in Anchorage. Lile’s three children, Ed, Lile and Judy said their mother, “would have been delighted with this garden as a place to grow, show and learn.”

The new garden was made possible with funding from Rasmuson Foundation, Rasmuson family members, and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), Earthscape, Atwood Foundation, Ayse Gilbert, Anchorage Sand & Gravel, Madge & John Oswald and friends of the Botanical Garden.

“This garden has been in the works since 2008,” said Julianne McGuinness, executive director of Alaska Botanical Garden. “We are thrilled to now have the garden complete, and to have it named after Lile, who was one of our state’s most avid early gardeners.”

Lile Rasmuson, who died in 1960, was known for the gardens she grew at the Rasmuson’s first home at 10th & G Street in downtown Anchorage, and later at their Turnagain home. She grew all types of vegetables, berries and especially loved flowers.

The Lile’s Garden concept design includes the use of swaths of plant colors and foliage textures to create the image of a piece of Athabascan floral beadwork. It was created by Carol R. Johnson of Boston, in conjunction with Earthscape. In 2008, Northwest Landscaping was contracted to construct the garden’s planting beds and pathways.

The Alaska Botanical Garden opened in 1993 and currently features three hardy perennial gardens, an Herb Garden, an alpine rock Garden, a Wildflower Trail, Lowenfels Family Nature Trail and an Alaskan Kitchen Garden exhibit. The garden occupies about 110 acres between the Far North Bicentennial Park and Benny Benson School in east Anchorage. A Master Plan guides the development of the garden, which in recent years has included a paved loop trail, a research plot and a work center with on-site staff offices. The Master Plan calls for much of the land to remain in a natural state, with individual “gardens-within-the-Garden” interconnected by trails through the boreal forest.

Other who contributed to elements of Lile’s Garden include the family of Krista Ferguson, Larry & Wendy Buklis (in memory of Mary Buklis), Judy & Larry Wilmarth, Anchorage Garden Club, Wildflower Garden Club, Constance Morgan, Barbara & Gary Baugh, Jane Baldwin and Mary Jo Burns.

The Alaska Botanical Garden, including Lile’s Garden, is open to the public year-round during daylight hours, and it’s a great place for bird watching, hiking, walking, photography, painting or reading. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for children ages three to 18 and free for members and children under the age of three.

Celebrating 20 years, the Alaska Botanical Garden is a donor-supported, non-profit public garden, dedicated to promoting the beauty and value of plant material through education, preservation, recreation and research. Alaska Botanical Garden is one of the first public gardens in the country to adopt completely organic/sustainable horticultural practices. Learn more at www.alaskabg.org.

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