Located on opposite sides of Red Butte Creek, the Amphitheatre and Rose Garden will be a complementary pair upon the completion of the project. The two have been combined in design, will share views into one another and be connected by a bridge. Together, they will offer elegant garden plantings, rest areas, an elliptical lawn for weddings or other events, and a Rose House for brides, concert artists, or small group meetings.
The Amphitheatre portion of this project broke ground in September of 2007. It was completed in less than a year, between the Garden's Annual Outdoor Concert Series season. The remodeled Amphitheatre was expanded by a half-acre and features a sponsor pavilion of stepped terraces and permanent restroom facilities. The Amphitheatre opened for its first concert on July 11, 2008, and hosted 14 concerts during its inaugural year. As the Garden looks to the future, the Amphitheatre may also be used to screen films, stage plays and present other outdoor performances.
The adjacent Rose Garden will be the premiere site in Utah for displaying and interpreting roses. This uniquely Utah Rose Garden is scheduled for completion in October 2008 and will have its grand opening in the spring of 2009. With the completion of the Rose Garden, Red Butte Garden will have an additional breath-taking garden setting in which to host weddings, receptions and other events.
Beauty and Conservation
Because Red Butte Garden has a vision to bring together conservation, community and art, the Amphitheatre and Rose Garden projects were built with conservation techniques in mind. Among the “green” aspects of the project are water and resource-conserving turf, thermally-insulated buildings and solar powered lighting. The lawns are a dwarf-type tall fescue, which grows more slowly and requires less water and less frequent mowing than typical bluegrass turf. Biograss, a Utah company, developed and donated an acre and half of this sod to the Garden for the project.
The Amphitheatre restroom and kitchen buildings are partially buried in the ground and have “green” roofs with soil to insulate them against summer heat. Together with the thick concrete and stone walls, the need for air conditioning was eliminated, saving money and energy. A solar photovoltaic system with battery storage supplies electricity for site and restroom lighting in the Amphitheatre and feeds power back into the grid when the lights are not in use, which allows the Garden to reduce its carbon footprint.
