The Highlands Biological Station, one of the oldest research facilities in the country, operates both the center and the gardens. The center is a showcase for the animals and plants found on the Highlands Plateau, a unique ecosystem that attracts top researchers from around the world. Here you'll find user-friendly exhibits, American Indian artifacts, mineral and rock specimens, snakes, salamanders and mounted specimens of area mammals and birds. In the Botanical Gardens, the trails, with their excellently identified plants and trees, will take you around Lake Ravenel, along a creek and up to a small waterfall. The center is open from 10 AM to 5 PM Monday through Saturday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Admission is free.
The gardens are there for you to enjoy anytime. Even in winter, thick growths of rhododendron, galax and doghobble make it a deep-green little paradise. To see the United States' second-largest yellow poplar, named for a former Wayah District Ranger, drive west out of Franklin on U.S. Highway 64 and turn on F.R. 67 toward the Standing Indian Campground. The giant memorial tree is 25 feet in circumference, and, until a storm blew off its top, it was 125 feet tall. The Ritter Lumber Company took the rest of the virgin timber out of this area in the early 1930s.