Photo by Kirk Ross

It wasn’t a groundbreaking, but a symbolic sprinkling of rainwater on native plants that marked the official event celebrating the pending construction of the new North Carolina Botanical Garden’s Visitor Education Center Saturday on Laurel Hill Road.

The center is the first building at a major U.S. campus to be designed as a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) structure, the highest certification given by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The privately funded center is expected to open in fall of 2008. Joining student leaders Janie Hauser and Jesse Prentice-Dunn are Bill Bracey, president of the botanical Garden Foundation, Peter White, director of the garden, Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue and Chancellor James Moeser.

In an agreement with the town, Laurel Hill Road will be closed, possibly as early as this fall, and the pavement replaced with greenspace between the new center and the garden’s habitat collections.