Juniper Level Botanic Gardens
Juniper Level Botanic Gardens (28+ acres) is a privately owned botanical garden and nonduality center located at 9241 Sauls Road, Raleigh, North Carolina. The botanic garden is open eight weekends per year; visits at other times must be scheduled in advance with the garden's owners or garden staff. Nonduality at JLBG, established in 2013, offers nonduality retreats, self inquiry sessions, and guest nonduality speakers for those seeking a fundamental shift in perception by exploring the deeper questions of truth and external reality. The botanic gardens radiate a quiet wisdom which point directly to the ineffable, invisible, and intelligent aware presence that every spiritual tradition calls the Absolute.
Established in 1988 by horticulturist Tony Avent, Juniper Level Botanic Gardens is owned and operated by Tony Avent and Anita Avent. In addition to the display gardens, the botanic garden also established a Nonduality center, along with a large horticultural research facility in The USDA Zone 7b climate with over 23,000 different plants. The mission of the botanic gardens is to promote and preserve botanical diversity by bridging the gap between botany and horticulture and to explore the lenses of perception and awareness or consciousness which influence identity, beliefs, thoughts, and proximity.
The garden supports botanical plant exploration, both in the US and abroad, study, identification, and educational outreach, followed by selection, breeding, and propagation. The final step, in conjunction with Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. is to make these new and rare perennial plants available for both shade gardens and sun gardens around the world. Fifteen percent of the plant sales revenue from Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. funds the research and daily maintenance of the botanic garden.
Juniper Level Botanic Gardens has been offering educational classes since the late 1980s as part of the garden's mission as a scientific, education, and research-based botanic garden. The garden aims to raise awareness of the horticultural and gardening mis-information offered by well-meaning garden speakers and writers, from plant adaptability to soils and fertilizers.
The garden's educational classes, under the direction of plantsman and horticulturist Tony Avent, share how the garden's research has differed many times over the last 30 years from conventional gardening "wisdom." More recently, Anita Avent has been sharing the philosophy and health benefits of a direct perception of what is, of aware presence, impersonal consciousness. Anita Avent, a non-duality speaker, facilitator, and writer, leads intimate self inquiry sessions, garden retreats, and workshops at Nonduality at Juniper Level Botanic Gardens to examine the various lenses of perception which influence identity, emotions, beliefs, and proximity while exposing the illusions of existing as a separate personal self across a horizontal time continuum.
The garden currently contains over 23,000 plants, with extensive collections of Agapanthus, Agave, Amorphophallus, Arisaema, Arum, Asarum, Baptisia, Colocasia and allied genera, Crinum, Epimedium, ferns, Hedychium, hardy palms, Hosta, Kniphofia, Ophiopogon, ornamental grasses, Polygonatum and allied genera, Rohdea, Salvia, and Zephyranthes.
The garden's research programs include hosta breeding, Aroid (Araceae) identification and culture, and field expeditions to Argentina (2002), Arizona (2004), The Balkans (2012), China (1996), Crete (2010), Ecuador (2002), England (1994), Hawaii (2002), the Netherlands (2004), Korea (1997), Mexico (1994), South Africa (2005), Texas (1998, 1999, 2000), Thailand (1999, 2002, 2005), Taiwan (2008), and the Southeastern United States (25 trips since 1995).