AUGUSTA — Viles Arboretum recently received a significant gift from Oakhurst Dairy for its New Education Support Center.

Oakhurst Dairy presented to Viles Board President Sammee Quong and Executive Director Mark P. DesMeules a check for $10,000 pushing the arboretum over the $100,000 mark and significantly advancing their goal towards closure of this campaign, according to a news release from the arboretum.

Jean Bennett Driscoll, executive administrative assistant, and John H. Bennett, president, along with their mascot Oakie, shared the limelight at their headquarters in Portland.  “We are proud to support the efforts of this small and hard-working nonprofit. Over the years, they have shown the true meaning of progress combined with frugality and they have pioneered a message of conservation, education and inclusiveness. We have been greatly impressed with their follow-through and commitment to their mission and we look forward to the groundbreaking for this important project,” Bennett said, according to the release.

With the arboretum’s fundraising goal being $130,000, and with the help of the Kennebec Savings Bank, the Quimby Foundation, the Betterment Fund, several other funders and nearly 100 arboretum members throughout Maine, the arboretum has reached its $100,000 mark, and hopes for a few crowning gifts of support so that it can break ground this fall and complete the structure next spring.

According to the release, the proposed wooden structure will significantly aid the arboretum today and well into the future in serving its many visitors. All of its existing and future programs will benefit from this support facility. This includes its community garden program, food and forest initiative, beekeeping, summer naturalist camp, nature-based workshops, trail enhancement initiative, interpretive sign program, botanical labelling effort, efforts to enhance public use of its trails, farmers market, its community apiary project, botanical collections restoration, MaineGeneral Hospital Healthy Living Program, and other activities in the works.

The intended outcomes in the short term will be that support for all of these activities will no longer require stretching the limits of its inadequate resources. All of its public outreach activities will be accomplished at a higher level of performance, with greater efficiency, with better outcomes all while allowing for growth, according to the release.

For more information, visit vilesarboretum.org, stop in, or call 626-7989.