Andy Cabe, the director of Horticulture, has been working in the Botanical Garden for 25 years. Photos by Josh Cruse
The Riverbanks Botanical Garden will be celebrating its 30th anniversary Tuesday, June 10.
“I think it’s important to celebrate 30 years and to recognize it because this Botanical Garden is half of the Riverbanks complex,” Andy Cabe, director of Horticulture, said. “It’s a big deal. It was a big deal for residents of Lexington County when they finally got part of Riverbanks over here 30 years ago. I think it’s a testament to the work that has been done by many people over the course of the years.
“Riverbanks is a combination of the botanical gardens. It’s been a lot of different people over the years working. We trained a lot of horticulturalists over the years. We’ve had a number of people go on to be directors at other gardens. I think the 30-year milestone for Riverbanks represents all the work we’ve put into the botanical gardens and horticulture, and it doesn’t just stop at the Botanical Gardens, horticulture at riverbanks in general, both the zoo and garden, that I think we can be very proud of.”
Waterfall Junction opened in 2016
The Botanical Garden officially opened June 10, 1995.
Five years after its opening and about a year-and-a-half after graduating from Clemson University, Cabe joined the Botanical Garden as a part-time employee at the garden.
“It was one of those things where a guy I went to college with told me he was working in the garden, and I need to come down and get a job,” Cabe said. “He kept calling and calling me, so finally I decided to go do something with my major.”
Cabe turned his horticulture degree into a 25-year career with the Botanical Garden. During that span, he has seen the campus grow immensely. When it first opened, the Botanical Garden was getting between 700,000 and 800,000 visitors a year. Now its averaging between 1.2 to 1.3 million visitors a year. A lot has gone into making that happen. A few years after the Botanical Garden opened, a designated parking lot was constructed with an entrance to the garden.
The Saluda River Skyride will be an additional way to connect the Riverbanks Zoo area to the Botanical Garden beginning later this year.
“Prior to 2000, the general public had to walk from the zoo and up a hill or take a tram to get to the gardens,” Cabe said. “Having a dedicated entrance opened up a lot of doors to a lot of people to access the Botanical Garden. For a lot of people, it made them realize there was a Botanical Garden over here.
“That’s one of the downsides of having such a nicely landscaped zoo with the diversity of plants. People just think they might be in a garden over there, but no, we have a whole botanical garden over there. It’s opened up opportunities for more people to access the garden and learn about it. It’s also made it easier for dedicated garden education programs that we have over here. Someone who wants to attend a program, whether it be a program for kids and adults, you can just park here and walk up. You don’t have to start at the zoo and wind your way up here.”
In 2016, Waterfall Junction opened, which included a children’s garden, giant tree and play houses, and a 25-foot cascading waterfall as part of a splash area.
“Having this children’s garden really helps because we get young people over here, and that was kind of the goal with the children’s garden—to provide a safe environment for kids to have outdoor play and to learn things,” Cabe said. “To sit here and play in the children’s garden and maybe they’re tricked into learning something along the way. The children’s garden really opened up a lot.
“Fast forward to where we are now. We have the Saluda Skyride coming. That’s going to take you back and forth from the zoo to the gardens with an aerial tram. That’s going to be pretty cool. That’s just paving the way for all the new development that’s going to be happening over here in the next five years. We’ll have animals over here.
“This campus is really expanding, but we have been able to maintain the integrity of this wall garden portion and keep it while we can develop all around it. This part has stayed the same and it’s still the garden. I think that’s important just to have the garden itself as another exhibit in the Riverbanks campus of exhibits.”
Visitors can access the Botanical Garden by taking the Saluda Skyride in the fall of 2025.
“By having different modes of access, they can walk, take the tram, and now they can use the skyride, an experience in itself,” Cabe said. “It will shorten the distance of time to get to the zoo and garden. Visitors won’t have to wait in line for tram, Just by doing some of those things brings more of the things over there. It’s going to open the garden up even more and make it an even greater attraction for the next 30 years.”
The Skyride is part of a campus-wide expansion project that will bring animals to the garden side of the Riverbanks Zoo campus in the next five years. It will also keep the horticulturalists busy with maintainance and landscaping.
Along with the additions to the gardens, that part of campus offers opportunities for residents to get more involved. In addition to summer zoo camps and annual plant sells, the Botanical Garden also houses a nature preschool for 3-5 year olds.
“We want people to enjoy the garden for its beauty, but we want them to take something else home, too, and learn about some things that they can do in their yard, possibly for the environment, all sorts of different things that people can do, and I think if we can get the parents interested on one end and the kids interested, it’s going to be a lot easier,” Cabe said. “I think that’ll help create a future generation of young people who have this love for gardening plants, the environment, and also having the garden and the zoo in the same realm, you really get to see how all of these things work together. I think we have the opportunity with the children’s garden, the children’s programs that we do to really make things come full circle, bridging gaps for these kids to see the value of plants.”
Running the Riverbanks Zoo horticulture department comes with its challenges for Cabe, including watering all the plants, planting schedules, handling the wildlife he and the other employees encounter, and working while trying not to impact the visitors’ experiences.
Through it all, Cabe enjoys a lot about the Botanical Garden.
“I like that no two days are alike; I like that this is a job where I can continue learning,” Cabe said. “Just because you are out of school doesn’t mean you necessarily need to stop learning.
“This place is a living campus. We have a database that goes back to before the garden even opened. We have plants in that database recorded. Every plant that comes into the zoo or garden is recorded in a database. That plant will have an identifying number, and we should know what bed it is planted in. If it dies, we will know that it’ll all be recorded in the database. Having this huge information resource is a learning tool, 30 years of recorded data. I love being able to be exposed to new plants, to get some of the newest, coolest plants on the market and to grow them here and to display them is part of what we want to do. We want to grow new and interesting things and show the public and be able to tell the public the ones that did well, so they don’t go out and spend $25 on something that is not suited for our climate. We try to grow things, test them here, and find the best performers, and that is what we try to promote and encourage.”
The Botanical Garden will host a public celebration Saturday, June 7 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The band, Prettier Than That, will perform in the pavilion. On-site food and beverage services will be available as will food trucks. There will be a scavenger hunt for the kids and tables set up throughout the gardens for demonstrations.
As Cabe looks back at the previous three decades of the Botanical Garden, he ponders what he wants to keep intact for the next 30.
“I would like to see the legacy of the work we’ve done, not only me but everybody who has worked here, the people who started this garden before me,” Cabe said. “I would like for us to continue and grow and try to do be a horticulture resource for the Midlands.”
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