Denver Botanic Gardens–Visitor’s Center, Welcome Garden, Greenhouses, Mordecai Children’s Garden

The Visitors Parking Garage includes shoring on three sides, two of parking below grade and roof deck parking for a total of 316 parking spaces, all topped by a 20,000 square-foot green roof. Entry and Exit is possible at both the east and west sides. At the top level is the Welcome Pavilion for the Mordecai Children’s Garden, which includes two restrooms, one elevator, and garden area over the deck at the north end (3′ of lightweight dirt), with four planters and open deck to below at the center exit area. The exposed exterior walls have an aluminum grating screen to allow plants to grow to create living walls. The roof deck has a concrete pattern involving color, gray, sand blasting, and saw cutting. 

The Greenhouses Project is a two-story, cast-in-place horticulture complex attached to the Conservatory, and includes an office, elevator, restrooms, atrium (two-story), and classroom orangery. This space connects to the greenhouse facility — pre-engineered — 12 individual, separately controlled greenhouses with a viewing space for the public at one side and the head house (seed germination) area at the opposite side. Back-of-house includes a  storage and maintenance facility facing new surface parking.  Demolition of the existing substructure entailed preserving the historical interest of the Marnies Orchid House for its renovation and incorporation into the new design.

The Irrigation project was approximately five miles of irrigation boring and conventional trenching for new mainline irrigation and added telecom and data to allow WiFi for the guests throughout the gardens. 

The Visitors Center and Welcome Garden is directly across the street from the parking garage. This gateway into the gardens consists of admissions, gift shop, stone-crafted water features, garden and an LCD wall.

Mordecai Children’s Garden is an interactive garden designed specifically for children. Its highlights include gunnite rock structures called Marmot Mountain and Pika Peak, hanging rope bridges, and swinging boardwalks.  Trails lead to the children’s amphitheater.  A vertical landscape rock structure allows for interactive demonstrations.  The Pipsqueak Pond at the bottom doubles as a water quality pond and active aquatic plant environment.  This garden is all set on the north end of the parking structure with the first 1/3 of the parking structure green roof sloping down to grade.