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Inside a growing Louisville attraction
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Louisville's Waterfront Botanical Garden is growing.
Yeah, that's a pun — but it's also a true statement, considering the massive expansion project taking place there. This week Philip Koester, CEO at Waterfront Botanical Gardens, joins LBF's Access Louisville podcast to tells us about everything happening place there.
Waterfront Botanical Gardens, 1435 Frankfort Avenue, is an urban botanical garden just east of Downtown Louisville, built on the site of a former landfill that was closed in the 1970s. The project opened to the public in October 2019.
The first phase of a four-phase masterplan has been completed, representing the development of approximately five acres of the 23-acre site. Phase 2 will include the addition of the Bonsai House and Display Gardens, an approximately $8 million project.
The garden already has about 50 trees in its collection.
"Over the next several years we plan to have a total of 150 bonsai trees," Koester says on the show. One of the trees — found at the top of a mountain in Wyoming — is estimated to be 1,100 years old.
"That tree is gonna be the centerpiece of the fifth outdoor room [in the bonsai house exhibit]," he said. The five rooms will each hone in on one of the elements of Japanese Buddisst philosophy— fire, water, wind, earth and void (space).
"It's going to be a huge selling point, a huge curiosity," he said.
You can hear more from Koester in the interview, which is available in the player above.
Waterfront Botanical Gardens had 2024 revenue of $7.4 million, up from $5 million the year prior, according to federal tax filings. It had net assets approaching $25 million. It welcomed 64,000 visitors last year.
Waterfront Botanical Gardens is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation of $10.
Access Louisville, sponsored by Baird, is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First.
Join us live: Our next live podcast, "Access Louisville: The State of Dining Out," is set for 4 p.m. April 21 at 500 West Jefferson. Three local chefs are coming on: Noam Bilitzer, of MeeshMeesh, Anne Shadle of Mayan Cafe and Lawrence Weeks of Murray’s Creole Pub. We’ll talk about issues facing the industry, including food costs, changing neighborhood dynamics and more. Tickets are available here.
We're gonna chat about a growing Louisville attraction. That's next on Access Louisville. Thanks for joining us. My name is David Mann, and joining me today is Shea Van Hoy. Hey folks! Later in the show, we're gonna be joined by Philip Kester, President and CEO of Waterfront Botanical Gardens. And now you get my joke about a growing Louisville attraction. Yeah, I know. I need some like failed raw modes. But uh anyway, the few things before we get into it. Um Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. Each week we bring you the latest news and plenty of sharp opinions on what's going on here in Louisville, Kentucky. This podcast is sponsored by Baird. Discover the difference Baird can make in your financial life at rwbaird.com slash Louisville. We'll hear more from Baird later in the show. And one final note our uh next live podcast is coming up. You've got mere hours to buy a ticket, I would say. Uh the uh the event is April 21st at 500 West Jefferson. It's called Access Louisville, the State of Dining Out, and we've got three uh restaurant folks coming on with us. It's gonna be Noam Billitzer from Meesh Mech, uh Ann Shadow from Mying Cafe, and Lawrence Weeks from Murray's Creole Pub will talk about uh you know a lot of issues facing the industry, including food cost and neighborhood dynamics and and that sort of thing. And I'll even uh link in the notes where you can buy tickets for that show. Um the show is this this show will post Friday. That show is on Tuesday. So uh if you catch it, if you catch this episode early, you can still get tickets. But uh um anyway, let's get into this interview. Shay, you had just wrote about uh the waterfront botanical gardens, and uh that kind of kind of started you down this path of uh uh you know talking to Philip.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the gardens have been kind of developing at a steady pace over the last several years on a former landfill site. Phil talks about that a little bit, um, just off of uh a River Road on Frankfurt Avenue. Um tucked kind of back in there, uh they've you know added an event center, which I've been to several events there. Uh but the recent news was they hired Angelica Ramirez uh as their chief bonsai curate curator. So uh the next phase of this, as Phil gets into, is this um you know elaborate bonsai garden with multiple trees, um including some a very old tree. Uh so they've hired her to kind of curate this as they open this to the public in the coming years. Uh so thought it was a timely time to check in with Phil, you know, who obviously is uh the CEO of the organization and and helping lead the vision of the or of uh Waterfront Botanical Gardens. Well, with that, we'll go ahead and go to the interview. Welcome to the Access Louisville Podcast Executive Interview. Today we're joined by Phil Kester. He's president and CEO of Waterfront Botanical Gardens. Welcome to the show, Phil. How's it going? It's going great.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're excited to have you on. You guys have had a lot of news recently, building up sort of some big things, but I always like to start off by asking just the general question of how's business? How are things going at the gardens?
SPEAKER_03Business is great, I must say. We are entering our very busiest time of the year right now. So, you know, every single day of the week this week, we have a rental, we have a field trip, uh, we have just general garden admissions, people coming and joining the gardens. We got big weekends now that it's warm weather, the flowers are out, things are popping. So we have adult education programs in the evenings, on the weekends. So we are just really humming with activity right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm guessing you probably dovetail with the excitement around derby season because you know it it signifies spring in Louisville, and then obviously your uh gardens are heavily dependent on you know the what when it makes really things shine is when spring and summer come on, right?
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell Absolutely, yeah. And we get a lot, a lot of out-of-town guests um during derby season. In fact, you know, on some days in the middle of the summer, you we've done you know some general asking around, and more than 50% of our of our uh attendees are from out of town on the weekends, which is just phenomenal.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Yeah, that's awesome. Then they spread the word and it multiplies. So well uh I recently wrote about the hiring of Angelica Ramirez the first hire to oversee the bonsai garden. Um so what does she bring to the organization and kind of that next step in uh we'll talk a little bit more about the the garden, the bonsai garden, but uh you know, why was she the right person for this job and what will she bring to the organization?
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell So Angelica Ramirez, she's amazing. She elevates our bonsai program immediately. She brings world-class expertise to the caring and growing of our bonsai collection. And I think just as importantly, she brings credibility and connections as well. Um, she has leadership roles with the American Bonsai Society and the North American Bonsai Federation, and that really positions us as like a leader within the national and even international network of bonsai. So, you know, she has a lot of um unbelievable experience working at the Chicago Botanic Garden for a number of years. She also worked at the uh the bonsai and pen Penjing uh garden in Washington, D.C. Uh she has traveled the world visiting all of the bonsai masters and learning from them. So she's just a huge asset, and we're so glad to have her here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I was when I was writing the story, I had to be had to think about that has to be like the ultimate talker, like at an airport bar, right? Like, what do you do? Oh, I'm an insurance. What do you do? Oh, I'm the bonsai master.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, there's not a lot of people in the world that have her level of expertise. Um it's definitely a rare, very curious thing. A lot of people are interested in and meeting with her. You know, she's gonna be great uh with donors, with all that good stuff uh kind of long term.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Right. And that um this is phase two of a four-phase project. Um and can you describe not just just beyond her role, but like what the purpose of developing the Bonesai Garden is for the for the gardens.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell So um as you probably know, we have uh an amazing master plan that was designed by you know Perkins and Will, major international architecture firm. They have an incredible landscape architecture practice. Um and so we are now on phase two of that master plan, and 2A incorporates three rather significant areas. So number one being the Bonsai Display Garden and the Bonsai House. Uh number two, the Tree Allah, which is a beautiful long uh tree-lined pathway that goes into the third area, which is the Bear Grass Creek Overlook. So those are three brand new attractions we're gonna have. Um it's a$10.5 million project, and we've we've pretty much been in a capital campaign the last three or four years. We're in the home stretch of that capital campaign right now. We only have about a million dollars left to raise, which we think we will do over the next year.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Okay, great. And um could you talk a little bit more about the the bonesai project? Like how many trees are we talking about? I know there's a special tree that's uh was elect-crect me if we're 1100 years old. So uh just a couple details on that, uh if you can throw those in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So we we already have about what, 50 trees in our collection. So already a pretty significant collection. And over the next several years, we plan to have a total of about 150 bonsai trees. And almost all of these trees are donated. And just for example, so we have um recently acquired this, it's called a Nwaki tree. It's the kind of bonsai trees that are actually in the ground and they're kind of large. They're like this one's like the size of a minivan. Okay. Um but this tree is 1,100 years old. Uh we found it at the top of a mountain in Wyoming, a 10,000 feet elevation. We had three separate bonesai experts confirm that it's over a thousand years old. And they know that based on the elevation of where we acquired the tree, the the thickness of its trunk, and then just kind of the the look of the tree and the branches of the woods. So it's an amazing uh ponderosa pine, it smells great. Um, it's been hanging out at a private nursery in Oldham County the last year, kind of getting used to the Kentucky weather. It's thriving, it's doing great. You know, these trees have weathered all kinds of crazy weather, and you know, Kentucky weather is like nothing for them. So that that tree is gonna be the centerpiece of the fifth room. We have five outdoor rooms in the Bonsai Garden, and each of these five rooms is based on the five elements of Japanese Buddhist philosophy earth, wind, fire, water, and void or space. And so this one's gonna be in the middle of the void room. Um incredible tree. It's gonna be a huge selling point, a huge curiosity. Um and in addition to that, we have just acquired what some people call the Mona Lisa of American Boxwood Bonesai. So it's just incredible, incredible tree, over a hundred years old. Um we've acquired it from a Cistercian Abbey in Georgia. And it's the same monks who founded Gethsemane Abbey here in Kentucky. There's a can there's a definitely a connection. Um and these this monastery, you know how most monasteries need to do something to earn money. Um this monastery in St. Conyers, Georgia, they uh cultivated bonsai and they sold bonsai trees. And this one monk in particular, Father Paul, he became kind of world-famous for his expertise. And this this it's called the Father Paul Boxwood, which we're acquiring. And it's gonna be it's a show-stopping, you know, major interesting plant that we're gonna have in our collection. So not only that tree, but we also got eight other trees from the monastery as well. So iconic American bonsai trees.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. And as we uh move into the the phase three and four, could you just kind of briefly tell us like what the what those phases are gonna entail? Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So well, first of all, we we're still finishing phase two A. So like I said, we have another million dollars to raise. And once we're done with 2A, we we want to make sure we are delivering an exceptional guest experience. So we're gonna take a bit of a pause, and then once we're up and running and feeling good about where we are, we're gonna revisit the master plan. And you know, there are a couple of different things we could do. We could do a visitor center, we could do a children's garden, there's a conservatory in the master plan. All these are all purely conceptual at this point. And so it's really gonna be, you know, a big conversation with our board, with our stakeholders, with our major funders, what will make sense to find next?
SPEAKER_01Yep. And I want to actually jump ahead to a question. Um, what is kind of your you you know been in the role for a little while now, what is your fundraising strategy and what where are you kind of pulling those dollars from and where you look into in the future?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, you know, I'm in my 31st year of nonprofit management right now. So many thank you. It's many, many years of fundraising marketing operations. And you know, we we go at it, you know, pretty much the traditional fundraising strategy of you have your individual donors, you have your foundations, your corporate, your government, we have individual strategies for all of those four areas of funding. Um and the government funding in particular has been quite significant recently with the the$4 million we've acquired from the state government. And we also um received a million dollars from Metro Louisville a couple years ago. And and all of those funds are part of this$10.5 million project. So yeah, pretty traditional approach. Um, but you know, I would say the biggest area we focus on are individual gifts, uh family foundations, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And when you're out on the grounds and kind of looking around, where do you um you know, how do you draw inspiration as you kind of shepherd this these plans that could be changing that you mentioned, you know, we could go this direction or this direction. And also, you know, you have a long history in the arts. So how does that play into sort of your philosophy on on shaping the gardens?
SPEAKER_03Aaron Ross Powell Well, you know, I I worked in a lot of major world-class uh performing arts organizations like Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, LA Philharmonic. And so I've I come from a background of like really investing in world world-class experiences and world-class product. And I think that's what we bring with our garden here. We have an exceptional, it's small and we're still very young, but it is a magnificent botanical garden. And with this 2A uh project coming up with the bonsai garden, it truly is going to be a supreme cultural jewel for Louisville and the region. Nobody around the area is gonna have a bonsai garden like this. We take meticulous care of our grounds, of our plants. Um, and so you know I really draw inspiration from I really want to make this an amazing, amazing garden and experience for the public.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, and to you you mentioned it'll be unique in the region, but um are there any sort of gold standards you look at in in botanical gardens that that you really like? Maybe you don't want to mimic them, but you you sort of say, ah man, they're really doing it right uh and that that you enjoy going to be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean some of the ones are you know, Longwood Gardens is like the granddaddy botanical garden outside of Philadelphia. And they just kind of redid, they just did a capital campaign too, a massive capital campaign, and part of that campaign included um refresh of their bonsai garden. Okay. And it turns out that is what everybody wants to see. People love bonsai. Um so that that that's a garden, um, you know, the Huntington Garden in Pasadena outside of Los Angeles, Denver Botanical Gardens, um, the one in Columbus, uh there's several really great gardens that we aspire to.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. And uh as far personally, when uh what's your either kind of a two-part or pick your lane question? Uh what's your favorite part of the gardens or what's your favorite time of year to be out on the property? Because you know, I like to go hiking and sometimes I enjoy being out in the winter as much as the summer because you can see more. Yeah, you know, you can see through the trees and not just the trees. So what what are kind of your favorite like personal, like, oh, I like to, you know, this calms my nerves or this gets each other.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Calming your nerves. That's it exactly. You know, I I love being in the gardens in the mornings and then and in the like dusk. You know, we have member mornings at eight o'clock in the morning. It's a beautiful time to be up at the gardens. It's quiet. Um, there's this the light is very special, uh, a lot of nature birds chirping. That's a great time to be at the gardens. And then on Thursdays, we have, you know, we're up until seven o'clock on Thursday evenings. It's wonderful and magical to see the sunset over the Ohio River over downtown Louisville. We're up on a hill, you know. Yeah, yeah. On a landfill, of course. Um, a former landfill, I should say. Uh, and so those times of the day are are my favorite, and then definitely kind of right now, spring through June are like peak garden period, especially early June when everything is just unbelievably stunning. And then I also like the fall. The color's different, it's quieter, uh, the weather could be a little bit better. Um, so those are my favorites.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Awesome. Well, we're gonna move on to the lightning round now. We asked some fun questions and quick answers of our guests. Um, so Phil, what are you watching, reading, or listening to right now? And you mentioned off-air that you are well, actually, give a little bit of deep detail. You were kind of a forerunner in podcasting, but then maybe what are you listening to now?
SPEAKER_03I love podcasts. Um, I go way back. Yeah, I was telling you all, you know, before we started, I pioneered the first um opera podcast when I was at the LA Opera back in 2006. So we we created a whole series of of it was called Behind the Curtain. We interviewed artists, singers, conductors, music, all that. So always been a huge fan of podcasts. But what I'm listening to right now, actually, what I'm watching, I'm finally getting around, I hate to say it, to watching succession. Uh-huh. Um, you know, it's it's fun, it's you know, amazingly written by all these awful people. But um, it's just it's just fun to watch. And then I guess what I'm reading is like for fiction, I'm I'm reading this book by uh Niall Williams, Irish writer called This Is Happiness. It's a fun book to read, like before bed, about um it's kind of a coming-of-age story of this young man in a remote town in Ireland. Uh, but uh, you know, it's about the coming of electricity to Ireland. So it's a fun, very hilarious read. Awesome. And one more book I'm reading is called Happy Bonsai. For those of you who ever want to get interested in bonsai or learn about it, or you know, take your dip, take uh doing the taking it up as a hobby. This is a great book. It's by Michael Tran, um, easily available, but it's got beautiful pictures, it's small and affordable, so check it out.
SPEAKER_01Cool, great. Uh especially for people that are getting jazzed about the about the um new gardens. Um so what's something about you that uh you know most people might not know, andor the craziest thing you've ever done?
SPEAKER_03Well, I've done some crazy things, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate for a family business podcast. But uh but let's just say I guess one thing you don't know about me um is I'm a medieval history buff. Okay. So I actually have a master's degree in medieval history. Um and I I'm just completely fascinated by kind of that period of the late Roman Empire into the early medieval period where you know before Europe became Europe and all those ethnic tribes running around Europe, a lot of interesting archaeology there. It's just a really, really fascinating time period.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell Awesome. I did I wouldn't have known that, and probably our listeners wouldn't have known that. So uh finish this sentence. To you, the waterfront botanical gardens is a success if well I think there's a couple of different ways to answer that.
SPEAKER_03At a basic level, I mean, if everyone leaves with something, you know, personally meaningful to them, you know, whether it's a moment of peace, quiet reflection, learning something new, or simply enjoying the beauty of nature. I mean, that that's like the number one takeaway. But on a broader scale, I think we're going to be successful if you know, if people in Louisville say, you know, or or people who want to visit Louisville say, you know, I want to check out you know the bourbon trail, I want to check out the horse racing, and I want to check out this incredible jewel of a botanical garden that's nestled right next to downtown on top of a former landfill. I hear it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And an awesome location. I mean, you're close to downtown, you're on for you know, you're on Frankfurt Avenue, just off River Road, so you're close to the river and also close to you know the stuff on Frankfurt Avenue. If people are in town, they've got, you know, a good spot to stop by and check it out. Um, speaking of which, if people want to visit, um uh feel free to plug something coming up and then also let people know where the best place to get information on the gardens is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so what's coming up is our fourth annual Bonesai weekend. It returns May 29th to 31st, and it's gonna feature um an exceptional bonsai exhibit, workshops, demonstrations, cultural performances and activities. We have partners like the Japan America Society of Kentucky, the Asia Institute Crane House. It's gonna be a very fun, very family-friendly uh event. I think we're gonna have koi fish and little ponds, so it's gonna be great. So definitely check it out. And you can find information out about that at bonesyeweekend.com and more information about the gardens at waterfrontgardens.org.
SPEAKER_01Great. Well, Phil, we appreciate you joining us. Exciting stuff going on at the Waterfront Botanical Gardens. Get out there and check it out and just keep us posted on uh phase two A and everything else that comes up. I certainly will. Thank you so much.
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SPEAKER_02All right. Well, that was a lot of fun. Uh glad to have Philip on. Uh but that's it for this week's show. Before we sign off, we'll uh just kind of let folks know where they can find us on social media. Shay, where can people find you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, under my name on LinkedIn as well as Shay Van Hoy on Blue Sky.
SPEAKER_02All right, and you can find me on LinkedIn as well, under my name, David A. Man. If you like what you hear, please consider subscribing to the Access Louisville Podcast on popular services like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you very much, Shay. Thank you, Philip Kestors, for coming on. Uh, thank you, Baird, for the support, of course. Thank you guys for listening to us out there, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.