PROJECT NEWS: Opening - Elkhart Botanic Ardens Draw Nature into Its New Visitors Center and Pavilion

Joseph Dits | South Bend Tribune
April 4, 2025, 5:06 a.m. ET

• Wellfield Botanic Gardens will hold the grand opening for its new 12,000-square-foot visitors center and a permanent outdoor pavilion on April 5, 2025.

• The $17 million expansion project includes a new garden, too.

• The visitors center will feature an art lounge, a small cafe, a gift shop, more bathrooms, and more event space.

ELKHART — Natural light swamps the Wellfield Botanic Gardens new Events and Visitors Center rotunda from a glassy dome above. Meanwhile, a broad view of the ornate gardens and the city’s wellfield pond — a source of drinking water — dominate the center's Great Hall through a massive bank of windows. 

About 20,000 visitors tramped through the rotunda during the garden’s big holiday lights, in the dark of night, late in 2024.  

But in the daylight of Saturday, April 5, with landscaping and a few details yet to finish, Wellfield will hold its grand opening for the new visitors center, along with a Woodland Pavilion for 800 people that will replace a history of temporary stages. 

An open house with free admission will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a dedication ceremony at 2 p.m.  

Visitors will find an arts lounge, small cafe, gift shop, more bathrooms, more event space, new gardens and improved accessibility for disabilities. 

Executive Director Eric Garton noted that a nearby church and the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, a key supporter of the project, recently held events inside the center for their supporters.  That’s one of the reasons for the new additions, he said: “To help other community organizations fulfill their missions. A lot of them don’t have beautiful spaces like this.” 

Garton will depart his job in two months to care for his parents in Oregon. But the grand opening marks a pivotal point for Wellfield as an ever-growing destination, now 20 years old, but especially for its front gate.

When The Tribune first featured Wellfield in 2010, a chain link fence prominently separated visitors from the city’s large, neighboring water tanks. Only tulips and a few other flower patches were growing in what local Rotarians had envisioned and launched five years earlier. It was a mere start to the multiple gardens and pavilions that now populate the half-mile trail that circles the city’s wellfield ponds. 

Parking has grown from 10 paved spots to 100. And the cramped visitors cottage, which has been physically moved aside, is replaced by the vastly larger 12,000-square-foot visitors center. 

It’s the fruit of a $17 million campaign that isn’t quite finished. So the center has art and what else? And for the first time, Wellfield will have a permanent collection of indoor art. They include pieces by the famous Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall, along with Spanish artist Joan Miró and sculptor Wu Ching Ju. The art lounge features six pieces donated from the estate of the late David Gundlach, who’d contributed $125 million to the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, Garton said. Gundlach had grown up playing around the wellfields because he’d lived on the other side of Christiana Creek. 

Also, the Visitors Center can fit up to 220 people at tables for an event. That compares with perhaps eight people who could have been seated at two tables in the old cottage.

There’s more backroom space for staff and volunteers, too. Garton said it was “a really special moment” when the board could finally meet onsite in January, after more than five years when it lacked enough room. Marketing manager Jen Tan, with a background in visual design, said she’s excited to arrange new products coming into the gift shop. Why is the pond empty? Visitors on April 5 will have to accept that the main wellfield pond is temporarily drained. The muddy hole serves as a good lesson.  

Unlike a natural pond that fills in with growth, Garton said, the city needs to drain and dredge the ponds every 10 to 15 years to ensure the health of its water supply. The last time that was done was in 2007. 

A bulldozer has been scraping the bottom of Swan Pond this week. It takes just a few days, but crews are also dealing with ample rain. They’ll soon refill the water from its source, nearby Christiana Creek, then drain and clean the adjoining Lotus Pond. “It’s not quite as beautiful, but it’s something we’re supportive of to have good quality drinking water,” Garton said. 

What’s in the big pavilion? The outdoor Woodland Pavilion offers a stage and space for about 340 chairs under the cover of its wooden timbers, though there’s room for a total of 800.  The first public performance there will be May 4 with the local Camerata Singers. 

Wellfield has hosted many concerts and performances, but it has always been with rented stages and tents. No more. Garton said it will save tens of thousands of dollars, though a couple of tents still may need to be rented. 

What’s the new garden? A garden will be planted to link the Woodland Pavilion to the wellfield pond. The garden will be carpeted with sedges, undulating little hills and boulders. It will catch water drained from hard-paved spaces — a scenic example, Garton said, of how you can keep water from escaping your property.  It will be bisected by a curving rill, or small stream, that actually is an artistic stone channel. It will only carry water from draining precipitation. 

What happens to the old cottage? The old visitors cottage, which opened in 2013, is getting a facelift so it will be used for multiple other purposes: a bridal cottage, gathering area for field trips, classroom or for small and corporate events. 

How much did it all cost? The campaign for all of these upgrades is a total of $17 million. Of that, about $14.5 million has been raised, including art donations, Garton said. About $3 million is still being raised for an endowment to support operating costs. Wellfield operations are 100% supported by private dollars. The only exception, he said, was a $1.3 million grant that went to the campaign from the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, or READI .