Our goal is to provide greater access to plants in peril, creating opportunities for the public to learn about the medicinal plants this community holds dear. Our newly opened Archives are the biggest collection of Jim Duke’s prolific herbal writings, Peggy Duke’s incredible botanical drawings, along with the couple’s notes, files, and herbarium—preserving their extensive research for the public to see in one central locale. And we want to make it accessible to all!

The Duke Library is located in the new center and curated in hand-made red oak bookshelves that have locking glass doors. Notes and other materials are stored in the filing cabinets below. We will be working next on a digital searchable database of the books and cataloging the extensive slide collection of plants from the Amazon, Costa Rica, Appalachia, Maine, and other locations that the Dukes traveled and studied.

Furthermore, we will be curating a small herbarium collection from Jim Duke as well as plants from the Sanctuary in Ohio. We are at the planning stage for a teaching garden and hope to be able to announce ethnobotanical fellowship research opportunities for 2023.

Read about the lives of Jim and Peggy Duke

• James Duke, 88, Globe-Trotting Authority on Healing Plants, Is Dead – New York Times
• Ethnobotanist and Herbal Medicine Advocate Jim Duke Dies at 88 – American Botanical Council
• Remembering Peggy-Ann Wetmore Kessler Duke – American Botanical Council