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Burden Museum & Gardens
The Burden Museum & Gardens, a 440-acre property located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is known for its gardens, history, hiking trails and agricultural heritage. The property has been owned and operated by Louisiana State University since 1966, after it was donated to the LSU AgCenter by the Burden family. It is made up of the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens, LSU Rural Life Museum, and Windrush Gardens.

History
Once called Windrush Plantation, the property was acquired in the mid-1800s by the Burden family, who began donating the property to LSU 50 years ago in 1966 until the final parcel was given in the early 1990s. The recorded history of the Burden property goes back to 1812, when William and Francis Thomas acquired approximately 648 acres in a U.S. government land grant. William S. Pike Sr. purchased a 600-acre tract in 1861. William Pike’s niece, Emma Barbee, married John Burden in 1856 and together they built the Burden house, naming the property Windrush because it reminded John Burden of an area of England where he grew up. Although the Burdens used the property, ownership remained in the Pike family.

William Pike died in 1877, and his widow, Mary Ann Huguet Pike, died in 1904, when the Pike heirs inherited considerable land in the Baton Rouge area. The 600-acre Windrush property was sold in December 1905 to William Pike Burden. The third son of John and Emma purchased the land where his parents had resided but never owned. William Burden married Ollie Brice Steele in 1895, and they had three children – Ione Easter born in 1896, William Pike Jr. (known as Pike) born in 1898 and Ollie Steele (known as Steele) born in 1900. The Burdens lived in Baton Rouge and used Windrush as their country home until 1921, when they renovated the house and moved there permanently.

William Sr. died four years later, leaving one-half of Windrush to his wife and one-sixth to each of the children. “Miss Ollie” and the children continued living in the Burden house. Steele was the master planner for Windrush. He was a painter and sculptor and was best known as a landscape designer. He laid out the Windrush Gardens as well as the design for the Windrush Plantation, including lakes, roadways and allees. Pike attended LSU but never graduated. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War I and later started a successful printing and publishing business. Pike married Jeanette Monroe in 1922, and they built a small home on the Windrush property. In 1940 they built the West Indies-style house that remains the Monroe home today. Ione spent most of her career at LSU and was director of student activities from 1948 to 1961. She never married and lived at Windrush with Miss Ollie and her brother Steele. Ione died in 1983 and left her share of the family property as well as stocks and cash to the Burden Foundation. In 1961 Ione, Pike and Steele established the Burden Foundation and placed the Windrush property in it. By 1965 they had donated 30 acres to the Franciscan Sisters, who established Ollie Steele Burden Manor, a nursing care facility for the elderly.

The LSU connection began in 1925 when LSU professor John Gray, an early authority on soybeans, established experimental plots on Windrush Plantation. Other College of Agriculture researchers soon followed. LSU had been renting land on the Windrush Plantation for more than 20 years when the Burden Foundation donated the first 50 acres to LSU in 1966. Succeeding donations to LSU were made in increments, with the property designated to be used for horticultural and agronomic research, for development of the Rural Life Museum and as a green area. When LSU accepted the first donation, the Agricultural Center appointed Louis Anzalone as the first resident director. He was responsible for fencing the property and installing irrigation in the open fields.

Over the years, the focus of research at Burden Center has changed. In 1979, when Warren Meadows was appointed resident director of the Burden Research Plantation, as it was known then, research included soybeans and other agricultural crops. Current research at the Botanic Gardens includes trials to evaluate the performance of landscape bedding plants and vegetables, with warm-season and cool-season plants rotated in approximately 5,000 square feet of raised beds. In addition, the Botanic Gardens is home to trials to evaluate various varieties of tomatoes, sweet potatoes, strawberries and many other commercial and home garden vegetables and fruits. The Gardens has developed close relationships with many local organizations, including the East Baton Rouge Master Gardeners, Baton Rouge Camellia Society, Baton Rouge Bonsai Society, Baton Rouge Hibiscus Society, Baton Rouge Herb Society and the Baton Rouge Rose Society.