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THE UNSEEN GARDEN
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BY JONATHAN
SCHLERETH
The Missouri Botanical Garden is one of the top three botanical
gardens in the world. When Peter Raven, Ph.D., the director of the
Missouri Botanical Garden, began more than 30 years ago, the Garden
had 80 staff members, four Ph.D.s, a $650,000 annual budget, and
only 10 acres of horticultural displays. Today, the Garden has a
staff of 450, 53 Ph.D.s, an annual budget of more than $28 million,
and displays covering 73 acres. Attendance has tripled and membership
has grown from 4,000 to more than 35,000. What is at the center
of this growth? The Garden’s board of trustees.
Missouri
Botanical Garden Trustees
(Seated left to right): Nora Stern, Mark S.
Wrighton, Lucy Lopata, Jack E. Thomas Jr., Scott C.
Schnuck, Susie Schulte, Members Board President; Nancy
Siwak, Jefferson L. Miller, Evelyn Edison Newman
(Standing left to right): Samuel C. Davis,
Douglas B. MacCarthy, Jane Tschudy, William H. T.
Bush,
Wallt Nelson (stand-in for the Hon. Buzz Westfall),
John K. Wallace Jr., Joseph F. Shaughnessy,
Edward D. Higgins, E. Desmond Lee Jr., Charles E.
Kopman, Margaret B. Grigg, Carolyn W. Losos,
William K. Tao, Surinder M.Sehgal
Not pictured: Clarence C. Barksdale, John H.
Biggs, Reverend Lawrence Biondi, S.J.,
Ambassador Stephen F. Brauer, Arnold W. Donald, L.B.
Eckelkamp, M. Peter Fischer, Marilyn Fox,
Robert R. Hermann, David W. Kemper, John E. Klein,
Ralph Korte, Robert E. Kresko, June M. Kummer, James
S. McDonnell III, Prof. Philippe Morat, Lucius B.
Morse, Dr. Helen E. Nash, William R. Orthwein, Jr.,
David C. Pratt, Nicolas L. Reding, Lucianna Gladney
Ross, Anthony F. Sansone, Sr., Warren M. Shapleigh,
Honorable Francis G. Slay, Right Reverend George Wayne
Smith, Robert B. Smith, Edith Johnson Spink, Andrew
C. Taylor, George E. Thoma, Dr. Blanche M. Touhill,
Hendrik A. Verfaillie, Honorable Buzz Westfall, O.
Sage Wightman III, Roma H. Witcoff, Dr. Thomas A.
Woolsey, and Harry E. Wuertenbaecher, Jr. |
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“The board forms the nucleus in fulfilling the Garden’s mission,”
says Jack Thomas Jr., the president of the board of trustees. “They
fulfill that mission by insuring the financial viability of the
Garden and with their committee work.” The Garden has committees
that are assigned to the numerous facilities aside from the main
Garden on Shaw Boulevard. The Garden is comprised of the Tower Grove
facility, the Shaw Nature Reserve, the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center,
the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House, and the Gateway Center for
Resource Efficiency in Grand Center. Other board members and committees
are focused on the operating perspective including finance, budgeting,
education and research. The board also oversees the fundraising
process and the implementation of the master plan from start to
finish.
This depth and breadth of committee involvement generates the need
for a diverse group of board members who possess distinct skills
and experiences. “We have a broad spectrum of board representation,”
Thomas says. “The members include: corporate leaders, philanthropists,
scientists, members of the clergy, the mayor of St. Louis, and three
chancellors of higher learning.”
“Our trustees are carrying Henry Shaw’s vision forward,” Raven says.
Henry Shaw opened the Missouri Botanical Garden’s doors in 1859
and molded the Garden after the great European estates and botanical
institutions. In his will, Shaw conveyed that the Garden’s mission
would include horticultural displays, scientific research, and education.
Raven and the board have taken Shaw’s original vision and made the
Garden into one of the highest-ranking botanical institutions in
the world.
The Missouri Botanical Garden is ranked as one or two in the world
because of its expansive research efforts. “There’s an unseen Garden
that a lot of people may not be aware of. We have Ph.D.s and graduate
students working in the rainforest and other tropical areas in Central
and South America,” Thomas says. “They are constantly doing research
and identifying new species and doing some wonderful field work.”
The Garden’s research efforts lead to publications in the MBG Press,
mounting collections in the MBG Herbarium (one of the two largest
dried plant libraries in the U.S. with some 5.6 million specimens)
and new entries in TROPICOS (the “largest and most widely used botanical
database in the world,” as reported in the Garden’s Annual Report).
The Garden also has an extensive botanical library that is considered
one of the world’s best with a collection of original works authored
by Linnaeus, Audubon, and Darwin. The Garden is also expanding into
web publishing by digitizing the library’s current holdings, which
can be accessed via www.mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html.
While the Garden is focused on research, they are also focused on
education. The Garden educates more than 128,000 children per year
in grades K-12. Children are taught environment-anchored mathematics
and science. “We use all of our facilities, from the Butterfly House
to the Tower Grove facility [for education],” Thomas says. Still,
new initiatives are being developed by Dr. Luther S. Williams, the
director of Education and Interpretation, to expand the Garden’s
educational programs to reach more children by partnerships with
school districts in both Missouri and Illinois.
One last unseen aspect of the Garden is revitalization and economic
development. The board and the Garden are currently working with
neighborhood organizations to redevelop and stabilize the vicinity
surrounding the Garden. “We’ve worked with a number of local groups
in terms of maintaining and improving the area around the Garden,”
Thomas says. “We’ve had some great successes in some small pockets,
but we still have a long way to go.”
The Garden’s efforts in economic development are not solely focused
locally; they also work with foreign governments and institutions.
“We’re increasing our role in Tanzania, Peru, Madagascar, and other
countries to promote sustainability and to strengthen cultural institutions,”
Raven notes. “We need to ask ourselves what kind of world are we
going to create. Do we want to be living off of the principal or
the interest?”
The board members are proactively devoting their time, insights,
and money to the Garden. The Garden has received recent donations
made by fellow board member, David Kemper, and the Kemper family
as well as by Commerce Bank. The Jack Taylor family recently donated
$30 million to the Garden, establishing the Taylor Fund for Ecological
Research.
“The board believes in Peter Raven and his vision,” Thomas says.
Dr. Raven is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost scientists.
He has been called a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine
and received the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest
scientific honor. “The city of St. Louis is very fortunate to have
Peter Raven as the director of the Garden and as one of St. Louis’
most outstanding citizens,” Thomas says.
“I’d like to think that I’ve positively affected a number of people,
institutions, and countries,” Raven says. “But I’ve had the consistent
support of the community and the board members and that is why the
Garden is so successful. I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Jonathan Schlereth is a freelance writer based in St. Louis.
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