Three Lakes Nature Center and Aquarium, in Henrico County, Virginia, has served as a prime educational center for pitcher plant and seepage wetland ecology. We designed and built both a southeastern pitcher plant wet meadow and a cranberry bog which capture the attention of visitors to the nature center. The bog is used in courses about wetlands, endangered species, conservation, and bog gardening.

Volunteers and Three Lakes staff assisted in construction of both wetlands. The pitcher plant meadow serves a valuable conservation role as a backup site for rare plant material. Plant species from the famous Shands Bog in Dinwiddie County, Virginia were raised from seed and are safeguarded at Three Lakes in case of loss in the wild and for ongoing restoration and reintroduction efforts. Shands bog contains ten state rare wetland plant species (Sheridan 1994; Sheridan et al. 1997) on a one acre site which has no official protection. Shands Bog is one of the rarest seepage wetlands in Virginia and plant material from this wetland is now carefully protected at Three Lakes Nature Center and Aquarium. 

Sheridan P.M. 1994. The Virginia pitcher plant bogs, part two: noteworthy bogs of Dinwiddie County. Virginia Journal of Science 45(2):71.

Sheridan, P.M., S.L. Orzell, and E.L. Bridges. 1997. Powerline easements as refugia for state rare seepage and pineland plant taxa. In The Sixth International Symposium on Environmental Concerns in Rights-of-Way Management. J.R. Williams, J.W. Goodrich-Mahoney, J.R. Wisniewski, and J. Wisniewski, eds. Elsevier Science, Oxford, England.