Centerbrook is designing several new architectural additions to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden. The garden is home to the Worcester Horticultural Society, the nation's second oldest, incorporated in 1842. The Society moved from its downtown Worcester headquarters in 1986 to develop a new botanic garden that is intended to support the Society's mission of advancing the science and improving the practice of horticulture.
The new buildings complete a hilltop complex at the center of a beautiful, gently rolling, 132-acre site. Existing buildings on the hilltop include an early eighteenth century farmhouse; the 1994 Stoddard Education and Visitor's Center; and an eighteenth-century-style Orangerie with attached greenhouse. The Stoddard Building houses classrooms, a theatre, an art gallery, a gift shop, a library, archives, offices, and a small café. Current landscaping on the site includes the Entry Garden, orchards, a Lawn Garden, a Secret Garden, the Systematic Garden, a wildlife refuge pond, woodland trails, and the Cottage and Vegetable Gardens.
Centerbrook's project fulfills a 1988 master plan for the complex by Marshall-Tyler-Rausch, with the addition of a new Horticultural Hall on the east side of the hilltop and a new Greenhouse north of the farmhouse on the south side. The new buildings will complete the hilltop quadrangle and form an enclosure for a new Winter Garden at the center, designed by Marshall-Tyler-Rausch, along with other new gardens and landscape improvements.
Some renovations will be made to the Stoddard Center in order to expand its educational, administrative, and gift shop components. Other hilltop improvements include expanding the working greenhouses adjacent to the Orangerie, adjustments to vehicle circulation and loading facilities, and the addition of a second Pit House at the north end of the site.
Photography © Jeff Goldberg/Esto, Troy Thompson