Tour - Cornell Botanic Gardens: Mundy Wildflower Garden

Cornell Botanic Gardens: Mundy Wildflower Garden

Ithaca, New York 14850, United States

Created By: Cornell Botanic Gardens

Tour Information

This 15-acre woodland is carefully managed to protect its incredible diversity of native plants and the wildlife they support—a treasured place for nature exploration, research, and enjoyment.

Trail Surfaces: Earth, Gravel/Stone Dust, Pavement

Tour Tip: Explore the PocketSights settings to change your map view, narration options, or to try a virtual tour on iOS devices.

Tour Map

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What You'll See on the Tour

Entrance to the Mundy Wildflower Garden

Welcome to the Mundy Wildflower Garden. The plants along this pathway show creative ways to showcase native wildflowers in gardens exposed to full sun. Follow this path and staircase down into a quiet woodland along Fall Creek. On this tour... Read more

Fence Around Restoration Area

A large deer population poses a big challenge to conserving this garden’s plant diversity. In an effort to restore what naturally grows here, we constructed the fence next to this path to protect newly planted species from deer. The plant... Read more

Base of Staircase

This area’s forested slopes, floodplain forest, wetland, meadow, seeps, and stream banks allow for a rich variety of plants to grow in this 15-acre preserve. The soil of the forest floor is exceptionally high in nutrients carried by rainw... Read more

The Mundy Stone

This stone honors Muriel Mundy, who recognized the value of this rich collection of native plants and provided funding in 1963 to protect and manage this garden.

Floodplain Forest

The dominant trees growing here are adapted to periodic flooding from Fall Creek and include sycamore (pictured), sugar maple, white ash (pictured), bitternut hickory, and basswood. This section of the garden has an exceptionally rich compo... Read more

Meadow

This area is periodically mowed to maintain this meadow, used by Cornell classes to study this plant community. Common meadow plants include cow parsnip, European parsnip and angelica (shown here). Take the spur trail here for easy access t... Read more

Streambank Stabilization

The plants growing along this stabilization wall are part of a restoration project. The gravelly, dry, and low-nutrient conditions are challenging for plants to grow, but typical of streambanks. This area was once covered with invasive crow... Read more

Bloom Board

Updated by dedicated volunteers, this “bloom board” is your field guide for identifying plants in bloom throughout the growing season. For over thirty years, volunteers and staff have been recording when wildflowers first bloom, also kn... Read more

Weather Station

The rich plant communities here are often used for research. This weather station is helping Cornell researchers better understand how climate change is affecting plants. By knowing the exact exposure plants here have to temperature, relati... Read more

Deer Fence Entrance

This large fence protects 8 of the garden’s 15-acres from deer. Before the fence was installed in 2008, native wildflowers, ferns, shrubs and tree seedlings were disappearing due to heavy deer browse. Now you can easily compare how much m... Read more

Glacial Erratic

The large granite boulder just off the trail and the much larger one in the creek bed were carried here from Canada during the last ice age over 15,000 years ago. Large ice sheets over a mile thick slowly moved south to cover much of New ... Read more

Native Lawn

Beginning in 2009 and continuing today, this area was planted to demonstrate how well these native plants thrive and how it performs as a replacement for traditional lawns. We encourage you to walk on it to see for yourself. Visit the int... Read more

East Entrance to the Mundy Wildflower Garden

You are at the eastern entrance to the Wildflower Garden where we are demonstrating more creative ways to display native plants in your home landscapes. We have selected a mix of plants to offer blooms throughout the growing season. From he... Read more