Published: April 08, 2009 01:33 pm      

Shangri La back on its feet after five months of closure

More than five months afte being forced to close because of another Mother Nature related event, the wonder of Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center is once again available to the world.

The facility reopened its gates to the public on March 7 after being closed almost six months since Hurricane Ike made landfall and flooded portions of Orange County in September 2008.

The beautiful 252 acre facility sustained flood damage throughout the gardens, nature center, and outpost and bayou areas, plus administration buildings, the garden store, cafe, volunteer center and nature classrooms.

However, according to Michael Hoke, managing director of Shangri La, staff members were able to capitalize on the post-hurricane closure by replacing damaged or destroyed plants and adding thousands of new plants.

“Hurricanes rarely have a silver lining but, in the case of Shangri La, our staff has used the time in which we have been closed to plant thousands of new plants in the gardens, and nature has renewed itself in the nature center,” Hoke said in a press release. “Visitors will experience a Shangri La that is more beautiful than ever.”

Hoke also said the temporary closure due to the storm allowed the Shangri La team to address matters which they could not have while open.

“Being closed has allowed us to determine our mistakes from before and take advantage of the time we had to correct them,” he continued. “There has been a lot of improvement.”

Hoke said some people have expressed concern over the damage caused by Ike’s storm surge and wind, especially to the flowering plants.

“People will be amazed at the flowers we have in here, especially around the end of March when spring is in full swing,” Hoke added. “The way Shangri La is designed, there is no time of the year when some flower isn’t blooming.”

According to Shangri La officials, philanthropist Lutcher Stark started building his own Shangri La in Orange sometime in 1937. It was a beautiful azalea garden situated near a cypress swamp.

By 1950, thousands of people had visited Shangri La and most magazines which often feature gardens had published photographs of Shangri La.

Sadly, in 1958 a major snowstorm hit the Southeast Texas area and destroyed thousands of azaleas, closing the facility for more than 40 years.

In 2002, the Stark Foundation decided to rebuild the Shangri La facility. After months of planning, construction was scheduled to begin in 2005. Hurricane Rita, however, had other plans and construction was delayed for months while Orange residents picked up the pieces from the Category 3 storm’s punch.

“The ecosystem of this place was virtually destroyed,” Hoke said of the park following Rita in a March 2008 interview. “We worked everyday for five or six months getting Shangri La cleaned, and once we were ready to get back to construction, a lot of the resources were not available because everyone else was busy doing repairs of their own.”

Shangri La sustained heavy damage to various parts of its property during the hurricane, especially to the trees as more than 150,000 were lost. Hoke said it will take about 50 years for Shangri La to become a “pristine paradise” again.

Hoke said an extremely heavy rain season from late 2006 into 2007 caused considerable delays, and then a fire in the ceiling of the exhibit hall delayed opening the facility by several more months.

Orange’s newest tourist attraction includes a beautiful children’s garden, a water garden, bird watching at the heronry on Ruby Lake, a Beaver Pond, and a bat house, which is adjacent to large mound referred to as an amphitheater.

Guests will be able to watch from this seating area as thousands of bats leave their lair at dusk and fly off in search of food.

This same area will also be utilized as a telescope station for astronomy programs.

Beaver Pond is a 15-acre body of water adjacent to Adams Bayou and is named for the creatures which created it, while the botanical gardens will feature more than 300 species of plants in nine formal gardens, including The Pond of the Blue Moon, with more than 40 varieties of azaleas.

Four sculpture gardens, which are part of the overall design of the Historic Garden, show how nature and art can be intertwined.

Not only will Shangri La serve as a tourist attraction, but it will double as an outdoor education facility complete with a meeting area, cafe, theater and museum, offices, bookstore and a laboratory to be used for conducting research and experiments.

The Nature Discovery Center is a hands-on exhibit adjacent to a scenic cypress swamp, and includes a laboratory and three outdoor classrooms.

Many of the materials used at Shangri La include content from recycled items. In fact, nearly 13 percent of all building material content was constructed using recycled materials.

The boardwalks which lead to many areas of Shangri La were constructed using approximately 1.1 million recycled milk jugs, which also helped the facility to achieve a special green rating before opening in 2008.

The facility is the first project in Texas and the 50th project world-wide to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s Platinum Certification for LEED, which verifies design and construction have achieved the highest green building and performance measures.

One environmental solution was to use landscaping as a filter to restore the water quality of the oxygen starved pond and wetlands of Ruby Lake, which is the nesting grounds approximately 5,000 birds per year.

“There really doesn’t appear to be a big change in the bird population, but we’ll know more in April,” Hoke said. “We will be able to tell when the other birds get here. Right now we have about 1,000 birds on Ruby Lake, which is normal for this time of year.”

Hoke also said Ike’s storm surge did little harm to the lake.

“The lake is now better than it ever was,” he added. “But the swamps were hit hard. They were under water for four or five days, and that’s not good. Swamps generally do better when water goes in and out.”

Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center is closed on Monday’s but open year round, except on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

From March through October, hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, and then noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

From November through February, hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Admission for adults ages 18 to 64 is $6 for the Gardens, $6 for Outposts, or $10 for both. Seniors over the age of 65 are charged $5 for the Gardens, $5 for the outposts or $8 for both. These rates also apply to students ages 13 to 17 with identification.

Charges for children ages 4 to 12 are $4 for the Gardens, $4 for the Outposts, or $6 for both. Children ages three and under are admitted free of charge, but children must be over the age of four to tour the outposts.

Shangri La was inspired by the mystical retreat described in the book, “Lost Horizon.”

“The hardest part of getting everything ready for our opening on March 7 was re-instituting the vigor we had before the storm,” Hoke said. “We are basically having to re-learn everything again. But, we aren’t worried. Shangri La will be better than it was before.”