Case Study

NC Arboretum

Industry

Institutional, Parks, Recreation

Project Location

Asheville, NC

Project Scope

Gardens, Entry Road, Water System, Operations Center, Bonsai Gardens

Cooper Construction built the gardens, roads and infrastructure of The North Carolina Arboretum at Bent Creek in Asheville, North Carolina, for the State of North Carolina through UNC Asheville.

Bent Creek runs the length of the site, and keeping sediment out of it shaped the whole job. Cooper held erosion control across every phase and broadcast powdered gypsum into the sedimentation ponds so suspended particles clumped and dropped out faster. When the Arboretum's public safety officers logged heavy rainfall, day or night, they paged Cooper and someone came out to check the ponds.

Cooper came to the work by referral from the District Ranger on the Pisgah Ranger District, who had watched the firm build the Forest Discovery Center at the Cradle of Forestry.

The first contract, in 1994, put in the core of the place: the display gardens, the roads, the site utilities, the pools, the trails and the amphitheater. Five more followed over the next decade, including Frederick Law Olmsted Way, the main entry road up from the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Core Area water system, the operations center roofed in soil, and two phases of the bonsai garden.

Landscape Architecture Magazine featured the Arboretum in February 1999 and credited Cooper Construction as project contractor.