Bob Byers, associate executive director for Garvan Woodland Gardens, seems right at home at the botanical garden where he spent more than 20 years as resident landscape architect.
He and Susan Harper, the garden's visitors services director, sat outside the Pratt Welcome Center on Thursday with peacocks strolling and calling nearby. Harper pointed out how close the birds stay to Byers and called him the "peacock daddy," as he first proposed their presence some years back.
Byers became fully immersed in the 210-acre botanical offering of the University of Arkansas when he was named the full-time garden curator in September 1994. But now, Byers has decided to leave Hot Springs and become director of Texas' Fort Worth Botanical Garden beginning April 20.
His beginnings in landscape architecture go back to when he was a child, he said Thursday.
"I was probably 5 or 6, and I talked my dad into giving me a row in the vegetable garden. I planted petunias and beets and Indian corn. The petunias didn't come up, the beets didn't do anything, but I made three little old ears of Indian corn, and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world," he said.
Early work at the gardens included documenting what philanthropist and namesake Verna Cook Garvan had done in years before -- planting rare specimens on the property -- and developing a comprehensive topography plan.
In 1996, the first master plan was created, and for the next 10 years a large part of his job was to make sure personnel understood the vision of the garden and to oversee their actions, ensuring all were sympathetic to both the vision and plan.
"We actually made a lot more progress in the first 10 years than we expected," he said.
One person instrumental to that progress was David Slawson, who designed the garden's renowned Japanese style Garden of the Pine Wind. Byers said Slawson has been a great source of inspiration over the years.
"He's really intuitive and really in touch with the way people respond to landscapes emotionally, which was helpful to me and very formative in the way I thought about gardens," Byers said of his mentor.
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Garvan Gardens architect leaving post
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