Tony Avent runs two enterprises out of what was once a hardscrabble tobacco farm 20 minutes south of Raleigh, N.C. The first, Plant Delights Nursery, will this year ship 120,000 novel and pricey ornamental plants to garden enthusiasts across the United States. Avent became a well-known champion of off-the-wall plants with no obvious commonality except for his belief that connoisseurs would want them.
The other endeavor is a botanical garden of Avent’s invention, filled with rare and unusual plants that the 62-year-old plantsman has collected on 80 expeditions in the States and 12 other countries. Supplementing those with plants from other collectors, he has amassed 26,000 species and varieties and has a collection greater than many public botanical gardens in the country. Juniper Level Botanic Garden is his way of preserving the biodiversity of garden-worthy plants at risk of being lost. It is also a botanical smorgasbord assembled to sate the insatiable: one man’s appetite for plants.
Juniper Level Botanic Garden is only open to the public eight weekends each year
Last year, he and his wife, Anita, announced that they were donating the botanical garden to North Carolina State University and planned to phase out the nursery as a large-scale enterprise (garden members will have access to some plants). The Avents are raising money for an endowment before the transition. Read more about his plans in a recent article in the Washington Post.