A Day in the Life of the Garden

Posted in Uncategorized on June 10 2009, by Plant Talk

Gregory Long is President and CEO of The New York Botanical Garden.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a quintessential New York Botanical Garden day, and I want you to hear about it, as it tells a wonderful story about the people, programs, and collections of this remarkable place.

It began in the conference room of our Plant Research Laboratory with a scientist new to the Garden, Ken Karol (right), presenting a short lecture on our current research into the Tree of Life—the evolution of plants from green algae up to flowering plants. As you may know, here at the Botanical Garden we are substantially revising scientific thought about evolution because of the research and work conducted in our Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics.

Later that morning I spent some time in our beautiful Howell Family Garden watching a few volunteers and two groups of Bronx second-graders—children maybe 7 or 8 years old—planting lettuce seedlings in fertile, black composty beds that the kids had learned how to prepare. Afterward I saw those same kids marching behind their teachers to go over to tour the Haupt Conservatory to see the plants of the world and a spectacular flower show.

Then my friend (and Board Member) Tom Hubbard came for a visit, and we went with our Forest Manager, Jessica Arcate, into the Garden’s first-growth Forest to visit a site where many very fit volunteers, including Florence Davis of The Starr Foundation (near right with Joanna Baginski) and Board Member Julie Sakellariadis, were planting hundreds of trees to reforest the Forest. It was an inspiring scene.

To top it all off, later in the day I was in the Mertz Library, where I met two of our new graduate students and saw a research librarian with a class of our Botanical Art students in the Rare Book Room studying sumptuous 18th-century illustrated plant books.

These vignettes are snapshots of the life of the Garden—what’s amazing here is the combination of art and nature, fun and learning, science and conservation, and high intellectual endeavor set in this beautifully planted and maintained sanctuary that we share with millions of people—from graduate students to 7-year-olds.

Many generations of scientists, horticulturists, educators, administrators, architects, garden designers, and Board Members have labored in a long and sustained effort—since the 1890s—to design and improve; to plant, write, teach; and to make the Garden beautiful and significant. We are privileged to be the contemporary generation fitting into this long continuum.