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Laura Condeluci
, Public Programs Coordinator, 202-226-4145

Savage Gardens: The Real and Imaginary World of Carnivorous Plants
U.S. Botanic Garden summer exhibit runs Memorial Day through Columbus Day

May 23, 2012 -- Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. Botanic Garden invites you to visit Savage Gardens where you can feed your senses with the captivating, the bizarre, the larger-than-life, real and imaginary world of carnivorous plants.  

Celebrating the oddities of the natural world, Savage Gardens explores plant adaptation and displays carnivorous plants and larger-than-life sculptures, as well as children’s interactive exhibits, and carnivorous plant bog gardens – all of which will immerse visitors in the fascinating world of these plants. In addition, the terrace garden beds are filled with hundreds more ‘savage plants.’ Take a walk through the National Garden to experience a naturalistic carnivorous plant bog, and visit the Conservatory’s south foyer to see small, but ferocious ‘savage’ plants and other plants from savage environments.  

If the allure of live plants is not enough, larger-than-life sculptures, created by Columbus-based artists, TORK, Inc., give visitors a bugs-eye perspective of four carnivorous plants. On the center of the front terrace, seven North American Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia) sculptures reach heights of 15 feet and are illuminated at night from within. In the East Gallery, see a 10-foot-tall tropical pitcher plant (Nepenthes) invites visitors to step inside to imagine the fate of an unlucky insect, a 9-foot-tall Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) sculpture that can visitors can close the “trap” through the use of hydraulics and a Sundew (Drosera) comes to life as fiber optics illuminate more than 500 hundred of the sculpture’s tentacles. 

As part of the Savage Gardens programing, the U.S. Botanic Garden will offer themed activities for adults and children, weekly ‘feedings’ and will host a family festival Saturday, June 16. For more details and a calendar of events, please see www.usbg.gov.

The U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory is open to the public every day of the year from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., free of charge. The Conservatory is located at 100 Maryland Avenue, SW, on the southwest corner of the U.S. Capitol. Visitors are encouraged to take Metrobus and Metrorail. Please visit www.usbg.gov  or call (202) 225-8333 for more information.

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United States Botanic Garden
The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) is one of the oldest botanic gardens in North America. The Garden informs visitors about plants in the United States and worldwide, including their aesthetic, cultural, economic, therapeutic and ecological significance. The Garden maintains more than 25,000 living plant specimens for public display and conservation. The USBG has been recognized as one of the country’s premier botanical institutions and is accredited by the American Association of Museums.