The Garden strives to be a primary resource to the community for learning about the natural world – its beauty, its heritage, its pleasures and its significance in the web of life. We are committed to stewardship and sustainability. Following the model established by our first benefactor, Grace Arents, we embrace our responsibility to engage the community, to increase the appreciation for and understanding of the natural world, enrich lives and enhance the environment that sustains us.

At Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, our mission is connecting people through plants to improve our community. Through a variety of programs and services we encourage curious minds of all ages to connect engage with each other and the natural world. The Garden offers children's programs like nature-themed summer camps, field trips for public and private school students and children who are homeschooled, scouting programs and daily “Drop In and Dig" activities for kids of all ages. Classes in subjects ranging from bees to botany, certificate programs, symposia and seminars, teacher workshops and continuing education coursework for green industry professionals provide learning experiences for adult learners. Internships and in-service learning opportunities help young adults navigate career paths, and group programs for individuals with special needs adapted to the appropriate skill level. We give back to the communities that support us by providing no cost, hands-on science based learning opportunities for 5,500 children from Title 1 schools annually, growing thousands of pounds of fresh vegetables for the Central Virginia Foodbank to feed hungry school children and at-risk senior citizens each year, and sponsoring Beautiful RVA's Ginter Urban Gardeners collaboration, which enables public horticulture, urban greening and beautiful place-making initiatives like the Richmond Garden Trail and the botanical beautification of Broad Street and the downtown Canal Walk.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is a learning landscape of lawns, lakes, wetlands and wildflower meadows, with 15 themed gardens and rotating seasonal displays composed of over 5,500 unique genera, species and cultivars crowned by a classical glass conservatory. The Garden is unique in its ability to facilitate experiential learning in a variety of outdoor environments. Our 82-acre campus features a 1. 5-acre interactive Children's Garden, a wheel-chair accessible wetland, four lakes, an apiary and demonstration hive, a live butterfly exhibit, a native plant garden, an edible plant garden and a healing garden. In the Children's Garden, kid-sized structures and displays capture young imaginations. Encouraged to touch, taste and smell youngsters learn by interacting with different plant species. They propagate plants in their own greenhouse, grow vegetables in their own small scale Farm Garden, and pick produce to sample or share. At two composting stations they practice principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. They cultivate the host and food plants that sustain butterflies and other pollinators in the Garden's certified monarch way station. And ultimately they learn about the symbiosis of environmental stewardship: man's responsibility to care for the earth that sustains us. The Children's Garden is staffed by experienced instructors with degrees that range from horticulture to forest technology, from English to environmental education, including master's degrees in education and environmental science. They develop programs designed to support SOL standards and teach STEM principal through experiential learning. Classes in subjects ranging from bee keeping to botany, certificate programs, symposia, seminars and continuing education coursework provide learning experiences for adult learners. A range of intermediate-to-expert-level educational offerings are designed specifically to appeal to experienced gardeners, Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists and green industry professionals. Internships and in-service learning opportunities help young adults navigate career paths, and group programs for individuals with special needs are adapted to the appropriate skill level. Teacher Workshops armed educators with the skills, knowledge and experiences necessary to enhance curriculum through nature-based learning. Ginter Urban Gardeners is sowing seeds of collaboration in Jackson Ward, Church Hill, the East End and Fulton by cultivating community engagement to create urban green spaces. The initiative teaches best practices in sustainable agriculture, urban landscape and garden design, project management and volunteer coordination, enabling Richmond's most vulnerable populations to affect positive change in their own communities. The Garden's Lora Robins Library is a resource for plant information, botanical art, and all aspects of landscape design and maintenance, while the "Hort HelpLine" answers gardening questions and helps with plant identification.

The Garden incorporates a range of evaluation methods to measure the qualitative impact of programs, including participant surveys, intercept surveys, performance reviews, feedback surveys, faculty evaluations and data collection from website activity and social media interaction. In some cases, participants undergo pre-and post-program testing to assess changes in knowledge. Trainees take exit surveys to rate their overall experience and perceived program value. Survey results provide feedback to help refine and shape future programming. Quantitative measurements such attendance, the number of volunteers and volunteer hours invested and visitor origination zip codes are compared year over year.

In 2016, 14,087 children participated in nature-themed summer camps, field trips, scouting programs and daily "Drop In & Dig" activities in the Garden's youth education curriculum. Internships and in-service learning opportunities helped 354 young adults navigate career paths in 2016, while workforce development programs for individuals with special needs offered similar experiences tailored to their level of ability. Teacher Workshops armed 555 educators with the knowledge to enhance curriculum through nature-based learning. In classes ranging from bee keeping to botany, symposia, seminars and continuing education coursework for green industry professionals, 7,053 adults came to the Garden to learn in 2016. Attendance grew to a record 450,000 guests and the Garden's 650 volunteers logged enough hours to equal 17 full time employees. The Garden was recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia as a Center for Environmental Education Excellence for its work preparing active stewards of the environment. In recent years the Garden has also earned its place on a number of prominent lists of best botanical gardens in North America:• Conde Nast Traveler: Most Beautiful Botanical Gardens in the US (2017)• Curbed. com: one of the 11 Best Botanical Gardens in the United States (2017)• USA Today 10 Best Readers' Choice Awards: Nation's Best Botanical Gardens (fourth in 2016)• TripAdvisor, FlipKey: one of the Top Botanical Gardens in the U. S. Worth Traveling For (2016)• USA Today 10 Best Readers' Choice Awards: Best Public Garden in North America (second in 2014)• Canadian Garden Tourism Council/ BBC Travel: one of the Top 10 North American Gardens Worth Travelling For (2013)• Travel Channel: one of the 12 Best Botanical Gardens in the U. S. (2013)• Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal, the Nation's Highest Honor for Museum and Library Service (2011) In early 2018, the Garden will launch a capital campaign to finance construction of two new venues, a Learning Village for environmental education across three distinct habitus, and The Vale House event space. Each is dedicated to its own purpose and will free up existing capacity elsewhere on campus; both will enable the Garden to fulfill its mission of connecting people and plants to improve our community.