The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center serves as Texas’s state botanical garden and arboretum, preserving and presenting native plants on a large landscape where the Edwards Plateau meets the Texas Blackland Prairies. Founded in 1982 by Lady Bird Johnson and Helen Hayes as the National Wildflower Research Center, it grew from its original East Austin site to a larger Southwest Austin campus that opened in 1995. Renamed in 1997 and joined to The University of Texas at Austin in 2006, it combines public gardens, research, education, and restoration work. Its collections, arboretum, family garden, and extensive native plant database have made it nationally recognized for conservation and sustainable landscape leadership.