Vice President of Operations Philip Scheurer announced in September 2004 that the botany garden, which began in the early 1980s on the Ayres lawn across from Hesler Biology Building, would be eliminated when parking was relocated from the top of the Hill to the Eleventh Street Garage and when the front lawn of Ayres was landscaped. The garden, used as an educational tool, contained unique, rare, and economic plants, displaying plants indigenous to North America, precursors to modern corn, and endangered plants native to Tennessee.