Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, spans about 55 acres with roughly 5 miles of walks and pathways through four principal garden areas. Created as a memorial to Sarah Pearson Angier Duke, the gardens began in 1934 when Frederic Moir Hanes secured funds to plant a debris-filled ravine, but floods destroyed the first effort by 1936. Hanes then persuaded Mary Duke Biddle to finance a new garden on higher ground in memory of her mother, with Ellen Biddle Shipman designing the Italianate Terraces. Later flood-control improvements strengthened the landscape, and the gardens became one of Duke’s defining green spaces.