THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC GARDENS ASSOCIATION Vol 24, No 4 • 2009 The New Native Plant Garden 2009 • ISSUE FOUR | 1 PublicGarden Editor Madeline Quigley American Public Gardens Association (APGA) Editorial Advisory Board Karl Lauby, Chair, The New York Botanical Garden Nancy Chambers Glass Garden, Rusk Institute Linda Eirhart Winterthur Museum & Country Estate Susan T. Greenstein Growing Minds Consulting James P. Folsom Huntington Botanical Gardens Virginia Hayes Ganna Walska Lotusland Thomas Hecker EcoBotanic Designs Sarah King Botanical Garden of the Ozarks Carol Line Fernwood Sharon Loving Longwood Gardens Janet Marinelli Blue Crocus Publishing + Interpretation David Michener University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum Donald A. Rakow Cornell Plantations Lisa Wagner South Carolina Botanical Garden Guest Editor Janet Marinelli Blue Crocus Publishing + Interpretation APGA Board of Directors PRESIDENT Nicola Ripley Betty Ford Alpine Gardens VICEPRESIDENT Paul B. Redman Longwood Gardens PAST PRESIDENT Christopher P. Dunn Harold L. Lyon Arboretum TREASURER Bill LeFevre Sarah P. Duke Gardens SECRETARY Barbara W. Faust Smithsonian Institution DIRECTORS AT LARGE Patrick Larkin Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Caroline Lewis Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Luke Messinger The Dawes Arboretum Wilf Nicholls MUN Botanical Garden David M. Price Bok Tower Gardens Jennifer Riley-Chetwynd Rain Bird Corporation Kenneth J. Shutz Desert Botanical Garden American Public Gardens Association 351 Longwood Road Kennett Square, PA 19348 610.708.3011, Fax: 610.444.3594 www.publicgardens.org 2 | PUBLIC GARDEN PublicGarden contentsTHE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC GARDENS ASSOCIATION | VOL. 24, NO. 4 • 2009 NATIVE PLANTS IN THE GARDEN 26 5 About This Issue 15 The Santa Barbara Botanic Native Gardens: They’re Not Just Garden Native Plant Japanese DEPARTMENTS Naturalistic Anymore Tea Garden Janet Marinelli Andrew Wyatt 25 Viewpoint Set against a backdrop of California native plants, a Celebrating the Native Plant Diversity 7 The Myth of the Messy, tea garden, complete with an historic Japanese tea That Surrounds Us house, makes cross-cultural connections, while Weak Native Plant Rick Lewandowski promoting the use of natives in diverse landscapes. An examination of the important role public gardens Steve Windhager, PhD play in interpreting native plant diversity and its Encouraging others to embrace these long relationship to global conservation efforts. misunderstood members of the plant world, the 17 Ideas, Design, and Native Plants Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center uses native A. Scott LaFleur plants to complement all types of garden design. Garden in the Woods, a seventy-five-year-old native 26 NAPCC Collection Profile botanic garden in Massachusetts, has a new Idea A Little Piece of China – Ex Situ Style Garden, whose ideas and concepts are being embraced 10 Creating a Native Plant Michael Ecker by garden visitors. Container Garden This year a genetic collection of 320 dawn-redwood Shawn Overstreet (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) at The Dawes Displaying plants that are most successful in the home 19 The Children’s Garden at Arboretum was granted member status by the NAPCC. landscape, the container garden “rooms” of the the Lady Bird Johnson Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden seek to delight, Wildflower Center 28 Colors of Success: Paradise educate, and inspire visitors. Andrea DeLong-Amaya Found: A stunning new interactive children’s garden will A New Tropical Garden Naples 12 Native Plant Gardens at incorporate native plants and connect visitors of all Botanical Garden Shaw Nature Reserve ages with the natural heritage of Texas. Vivienne Dobbs Kara Roggenkamp and Scott Woodbury In November 2009, fifteen years after the first “seeds” Displaying more than eight hundred Missouri native 22 A New Native Plant Garden at for a botanical garden were planted in Naples, Florida, plant species, this renowned twenty-five-hundred-acre The New York Botanical Garden a 170-acre mosaic of new gardens and natural areas reserve shares its rich experiences in managing natural opened to the public. Naples Botanical Garden and restored landscapes and plant collections. Todd Forrest The recent surge of interest in the environment and directors, past and present, share their road to success. sustainability has created the perfect opportunity to create a new kind of native plant garden. 30 Technology Finding New Ways to Reach New Audiences in a Shifting Media Climate 12 Penn French With a burgeoning attendance of nearly eight hundred thousand visitors a year, The Morton Arboretum takes a highly strategic marketing approach, reaching new audiences by making old media work better and shifting resources to new digital media. 32 Advertisers Index 2009 Index is available at 7 22 www.publicgardens.org. Cover: The new Native Plant Garden at NYBG will feature rare and unusual taxa, including Helonias bullata. Volume 24, Number 4, 2009. Public Garden (ISSN 0885-3894) is published quarterly by the American Public Gardens Association (APGA), 351 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348. ©2009, American Public Gardens Association. All rights reserved. Public Garden is indexed in The Bibliography of Agriculture. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of APGA. Public Garden welcomes editorial submissions but assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of unsolicited material. APGA The American Public Gardens Association serves North American public gardens and horticultural organizations by promoting professional development through its publications and meetings; advocating the interests of public gardens in political, corporate, foundation, and community arenas; and encouraging gardens to adhere to professional standards in their programs and operations. SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscription is automatic for APGA members. For membership rates, call 610-708-3014. Non-member subscriptions are $40 a year. Residents of Canada and other countries, add $10. CHANGE OF ADDRESS Send new address, zip code, moving date, and old address label to APGA, 351 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348. ADVERTISERS For information about advertising, contact Madeline Quigley, Director of Marketing, APGA, 610-708-3011 or [email protected]. 2009 • ISSUE FOUR | 3 4 | PUBLIC GARDEN ABOUTTHISISSUE Native Gardens: They’re Not Just Naturalistic Anymore JANET MARINELLI ow do you create a native plant the way to make a native garden more garden that even neatniks can appealing to the typical homeowner is to Hlove? For public gardens, this has “frame” it with more familiar landscape been a vexing question. elements. Mown edges, massed plantings, The native plant gardens at public and the like help people feel at home with gardens have typically been samples of one native plants. or more native plant communities re- As a result, more formal native created mostly for the purposes of science gardens are appearing at public gardens education. Even if they were created across the country. A number of intentionally as “gardens,”they’ve almost spectacular examples are profiled in this always been naturalistic in design. To the issue. The Idea Garden at Garden in the general public, these naturalistic gardens Woods is centered around a Carex often seem “messy,”so it’s been difficult for pennsylvanica “lawn” and includes a stone most visitors to understand how native patio, cobblestone edging, and even plants can be used to create the kind of pitcher plants in hanging baskets. The manicured and traditional-looking Whitmire Wildflower Garden at Shaw landscape that is the norm in their Nature Reserve, the sister institution of neighborhoods. Missouri Botanical Garden, incorporates For horticulturists and designers architectural elements such as gazebos scratching their heads over how to create and other small garden structures, tidy native gardens that visitors want to run paths, and maintained edges, making it home and replicate, the work of clear to the public that this is a designed researchers such as Joan Nassauer at the landscape, different from the natural University of Michigan, who focuses on the landscapes beyond. relationship between human preferences, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s particularly aesthetic preferences, and Japanese Tea Garden, which was created environmental health, has proved using California native plants, serves two invaluable. Nassauer has demonstrated that integral parts of the Garden’s mission: 2009 • ISSUE FOUR | 5 ABOUTTHISISSUE promoting the use of native plants in a variety of landscape styles, and providing a connection to culturally diverse communities. Rancho Santa Ana’s California Native Plant Container Garden, which opened to the public in 2006 and currently consists of sixty-six taxa in fifty- nine containers in several outdoor “rooms” occupying a quarter acre, is one of the botanic garden’s most popular attractions. of many styles. Using large swathes of a books on sustainable landscape design. Of In late 2011 or early 2012, the Lady Bird single species can actually make it easier for her book, Stalking the Wild Amaranth: Johnson Wildflower Center will open a new pollinators to find the plants. In short, the Gardening in the Age of Extinction, children’s garden that invites adventure and new native gardens are a boon to people Horticulture magazine wrote, “Not since playful exploration in more than four acres and wildlife alike. Voltaire has anyone so eloquently pro- of artfully arranged native plants. A three- claimed