Care for 250 Acres
Maintain trails, gardens, fields, forests, habitats, buildings, and other parts of a large and varied landscape.
Support Limeledge
Help Grow Something Enduring
Your support helps care for the land, build the collections, expand education, and keep Limeledge open to everyone.
Visiting Limeledge Is Free
Access to nature should not depend on the ability to pay
We believe people should be able to experience plants, nature, and environmental learning without an admission barrier. Donations help make that possible while supporting the care of the property, development of the living collections, conservation work, and educational programs.
Donate to LimeledgeWhat Your Support Makes Possible
Grow the Living Collections
Acquire, document, plant, and care for botanical material that can gain value over generations.
Expand Environmental Education
Develop the Brookside Community Environmental Education Center, programs, interpretation, and opportunities to learn.
Protect the Future
Build the financial and institutional strength needed to steward Limeledge for the long term.
Give Where It Matters Most
Unrestricted gifts give Limeledge flexibility
Young organizations encounter needs and opportunities that cannot always be predicted in advance. Unrestricted support allows Limeledge to respond where resources can do the most good—from caring for plants and maintaining trails to purchasing equipment, supporting programs, or addressing an unexpected property need.
The most flexible gift is often the most useful gift.
Major & Transformational Gifts
Help build the institution, not just the next project
A major gift made during Limeledge's formative years can have an impact far beyond a single season.
- Strengthen the long-term stewardship of the property
- Build endowment and institutional stability
- Support professional leadership and staffing
- Develop the Brookside Community Environmental Education Center
- Expand botanical and conservation collections
- Improve visitor infrastructure and accessibility
- Advance other strategic priorities
Invest in Leadership
A garden needs people as well as plants
Land and collections cannot steward themselves. Stable professional leadership gives Limeledge the capacity to manage the property, care for the collections, develop programs, pursue partnerships and grants, coordinate volunteers, and plan beyond the next season.
Long-term philanthropic support for staff and leadership can help turn a young volunteer-driven organization into a durable public institution.
Memorial & Tribute Giving
Plant something meaningful
Memorial and tribute gifts can connect a donor's story with the continuing life of the garden.
Because Limeledge is still building its collections and landscapes, tribute giving can support plants and places that become part of the garden's long-term development.
Ask About Memorial GivingCorporate & Community Support
Partner with Limeledge
Businesses, foundations, and community organizations can support Limeledge through sponsorships, grants, in-kind contributions, employee volunteer projects, and other partnerships.
Support can help connect organizations with conservation, horticulture, environmental education, public access, and community engagement in Central New York.
Discuss Corporate & Community SupportCorporate Sponsorship
Corporate partners can play an important role in helping Limeledge care for the property, expand educational opportunities, develop its living collections, and keep the garden accessible to the community. Our sponsorship program offers several ways for businesses and organizations to support Limeledge while receiving appropriate recognition for their investment.
Seed Sponsor — $500 annually
Recognition as a Limeledge corporate sponsor on the website.
Sapling Sponsor — $1,500 annually
All Seed Sponsor recognition, plus appropriate on-site recognition and the opportunity to arrange a corporate volunteer day.
Canopy Sponsor — $3,000 annually
All Sapling Sponsor recognition, plus enhanced acknowledgment associated with Limeledge programs and selected communications and the opportunity for a private guided Limeledge visit for company representatives.
Custom Sponsorship Opportunities
Event sponsorships, garden and trail sponsorships, and project-based partnerships—including support for tools, signage, equipment, restoration work, collections, and educational programming—may also be available. These opportunities are developed individually. Naming opportunities require Board approval and a separate written naming agreement.
Recognition & Eligibility
Corporate recognition at Limeledge is designed to be tasteful, mission-consistent, and compatible with the natural character of the property. Limeledge retains control over the design, placement, and duration of sponsor recognition in digital, print, and on-site formats.
Limeledge seeks partnerships with organizations whose activities and values are compatible with community well-being, education, environmental stewardship, and scientific integrity, and may decline sponsorships that conflict with its mission.
Acceptance of a sponsorship does not constitute Limeledge's endorsement of the sponsor or its products, services, policies, or views.
Interested in becoming a corporate sponsor?
Discuss a Corporate SponsorshipOther Ways to Help
- Volunteer your time
- Share professional expertise
- Attend and promote Limeledge events
- Introduce Limeledge to potential partners or funders
- Help spread the word
Transformational Giving
Some gifts have the potential to change not simply what Limeledge can accomplish in a given year, but what the organization can become over the course of a generation. Two of our greatest long-term priorities are retiring the mortgage on the property and establishing permanent funding for professional leadership.
Retiring Our Mortgage
Limeledge purchased the farm property in 2024 for $1.5 million. As a young, grassroots nonprofit organization, Limeledge was fortunate to acquire the property from its former owner under unusually favorable mortgage terms, making it possible to preserve the farm and begin building a public garden while the organization itself was still taking root.
Those terms provided Limeledge with time to grow, but the mortgage remains a significant long-term obligation. A balloon payment for the remaining principal is due in 2034, making retirement of the property debt one of our most important fundraising priorities.
Eliminating the mortgage would free resources now devoted to debt service for conservation, education, property restoration, living collections, and public access—and would secure Limeledge's home for future generations.
A transformational donor willing to retire the remaining mortgage principal in its entirety could be considered for site-level naming recognition in perpetuity, subject to Board approval and a formal naming agreement.
Funding a Full-Time Executive Director
Limeledge currently operates as an all-volunteer organization. Establishing a full-time Executive Director position would represent one of the most consequential investments that could be made in our future.
Professional, full-time leadership would dramatically expand Limeledge's administrative and on-site capacity; accelerate restoration of a property that suffered from years of deferred maintenance; support the rehabilitation and expansion of our trail system; strengthen fundraising, partnerships, educational programming, and volunteer coordination; and provide the day-to-day organizational capacity needed to develop Limeledge into a mature public garden.
It would also strengthen Limeledge's ability to pursue a higher level of ArbNet accreditation. Level II accreditation requires paid management, together with expanded standards for collections management and public programming.
Our ultimate goal is to establish an endowment capable of permanently supporting the Executive Director position, creating continuity of leadership without making the position dependent upon annual fundraising. A gift of that magnitude could also include permanent naming recognition, subject to Board approval and a formal agreement.
General Fund
Transformational gifts build Limeledge's future, but unrestricted gifts make its everyday work possible. General Fund contributions give Limeledge the flexibility to direct resources where they are most useful, including:
- General maintenance supplies and equipment
- Signage and trail maintenance
- New plantings and care of the living collections
- Administrative expenses
- Educational programming materials
Every unrestricted gift helps us care for the land, welcome the public free of charge, and continue transforming a historic farm into a lasting community resource.
Building for Generations
The trees we plant today may outlive everyone who planted them.
Building Limeledge means thinking beyond the next season, grant, or project. Gifts made today help establish a botanical garden and conservation landscape that future generations can inherit, explore, and continue to shape.
