DATE: Wednesday, June 18, 1997              TAG: 9706170004

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT

                                            LENGTH:   94 lines

NORFOLK BOTANICAL GARDEN REFRESHMENT FOR JADED EYE, WEARY SOUL BY LAKE WHITEHURST

M other Nature doesn't stick name tags on her trees or amid her flowers, ferns and other flora.

Lamentable.

No botanist, no gardener, I admire in ignorance whatever grows around or before me.

I deplore, without being able to name the cussed things, out-of-place plants - ``weeds'' - that uglify lawns and flower beds. Nut grass, crab grass, wire grass - these I know. We've been battling each other for decades. They win.

The staff of the 155-acre Norfolk Botanical Garden, which thrives cheek by jowl with Norfolk International Airport, provides the labels, in English and Latin, that Mother Nature scorns. New labels - white lettering on shiny black tags - are popping up all over the garden.

As in Norfolk Botanical Garden's emerging $500,000 Sarah Lee Baker Perennial Garden. Foxglove. Lantana. Ice plant. Phlox. Yarrow. Columbine. Salvia. Butterfly bush. All of these, and more, are labeled.

Hollyhock, I knew, sort of. But the white-and-pink evening primrose? Now we've been formally introduced, in polite surroundings, and I'm the better for it.

Natural wonders outnumber the stars. The subject of ``Cosmic Voyage,'' playing at Hampton's Virginia Air and Space Museum IMAX theater, is that most incomprehensibly immense marvel, the Universe. The film transports viewers from the heart of Venice to the farthest reaches of the Universe.

Norfolk Botanical Garden's miracles and mysteries are Earthbound, within reach.

A tranquil place, the garden. A haven from the rush-hour-expressway world. Soothing. Poet Andrew Marvell, of ``To His Coy Mistress'' fame, hymned gardens' happy power over the mind, ``Annhilating all that's made/To a green thought in a green shade.''

Trackless trains, visitors aboard, wind through Norfolk Botanical Garden. A new train, accessible to the handicapped, is being added. Boats glide through the canal to Lake Whitehurst. Fountains glitter in the sunlight. There are horticultural classes, a well-stocked gift shop, a restaurant. The garden is a setting for weddings and parties and family outings.

The Bunny Morgan Wildflower Memorial Garden is a glory of yellow this season, coreopsis having choked out all other wildflowers. Bbachelor's button hasn't a prayer against them. Garden staffers conferred with state transportation department experts about how best to keep a meadow mix going. Research continues. Meanwhile, the massed coreopsis awes. Quiet places, gardens invite meditation, introspection. Roughly 180,000 men, women and children - a sizable force - venture into Norfolk's garden, where eye and soul are bathed with beauty.

Serious gardeners cherish Norfolk Botanical Garden. But gardens tend to be self-effacing. Norfolk Botanical Garden isn't as well-known as several other Hampton Roads delights. More visible are Virginia Beach's sand and surf, Virginia Marine Science Museum and amphitheater; Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, Waterside Festival Marketplace, Scope and Chrysler Hall, and Virginia Zoo; and Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown and Busch Gardens.

The annual springtime crowning of Queen Azalea among more than 200,000 azalea bushes is an attention-getter, of course.

``The Haunted Forest'' Halloween-season treat, an annual fund-raising project of the Virginia Chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, is a family-oriented event luring thousands, as is the garden-sponsored Christmastide ``Garden of Lights.''

The city of Norfolk owns the garden. But the Norfolk Botanical Garden Society assumed operation of it in 1993. The society is closing in on its $5 million capital-campaign objective. Counting 2,200 memberships, the society is a non-profit entity bent on creating a garden whose reputation extends far beyond Hampton Roads.

That's not so wild a dream. Norfolk Botanical Garden is, as its fourth director, Peter G. Frederick, readily reminds one and all, ``at the northern extreme of the southeastern coastal plain and the southern extreme of the northeastern coastal plain.'' That permits the garden to harbor trees and plants that grow far north and far south of Hampton Roads.

The late, beloved Fred Heutte, Norfolk's gardener from the 1930s into the 1960s, was the first to herald the garden's unique geographical placement. He was on hand in 1938, when 180 women and 20 men paid by the federal Works Progress Administration ripped out brambles and other understory growth to make way for azaleas.

Norfolk Botanical Garden Society is a far more flexible, sophisticated and focused instrument than the municipal bureaucracy for transforming the garden into a national magnet for gardeners and flower lovers. The garden's large collection of camellias is the most important on the East Coast - one of the strengths on which the society will build.

Admission to the garden is modest, even when the price of a ticket rises by 50 cents. Starting July 1, admission will be $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for seniors, $1.50 for youngsters above age 5. Parking is ample.

The garden is at its best from spring through early fall. Ugliness, meanness - you don't find them in the flowers. Azleas are still blooming. Breezes massage the trees. Comfort your spirit in the garden. The price is right. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

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