Kalaheo, Hawaii (May 18, 2020) — Charles “Chipper” Wichman, Jr., President of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, has been named the 2020 recipient of the American Horticultural Society’s (AHS) Professional Award, which is given to a public garden administrator whose achievements throughout their career have cultivated widespread interest in horticulture.

The accolade is one of the Great American Gardeners Awards presented annually by the AHS to individuals, organizations, and businesses that represent the best in American gardening. Each of the recipients has contributed significantly to fields such as scientific research, garden communication, landscape design, youth gardening, and conservation.

A leading authority in the discovery and conservation of tropical plants, Wichman has spent more than 40 years with NTBG, growing from an intern and apprentice gardener in the mid-1970s into his executive leadership role in the early 2000s. Over the course of his career, Wichman has helped discover or rediscover more than a dozen previously unknown plant species; led a successful conservation initiative at Limahuli Valley before donating the land to NTBG; raised NTBG’s profile as an influential conservation, research, and education center; helped found the International Center for Tropical Botany at Florida International University; and secured Hawaii as the host location of the 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress.

In 2018, Wichman was awarded The Garden Club of America’s Medal of Honor for outstanding service to horticulture. Fluent in Hawaiian and Hawaiian Pidgin English, Wichman routinely gives talks on tropical plant conservation.

Because of the pandemic, the 2020 Great American Gardeners Awards ceremony, originally scheduled for June 18, has been cancelled. Alternately, AHS will honor award winners with video acceptance speeches to be posted on its website and social media starting in late May. View Chipper Wichman’s statement here. Descriptions of each award and biographies of this year’s recipients can be found on the AHS 2020 Award Winners page.

The American Horticultural Society is a nonprofit organization committed to modeling, educating about, and advocating for earth-friendly and sustainable gardening practices. Founded in 1922, AHS’s mission is to share with all Americans the critical role of plants, gardens, and green spaces in creating healthy, livable communities and a sustainable planet.

National Tropical Botanical Garden (www.ntbg.org) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental institution with nearly 2,000 acres of gardens and preserves in Hawai‘i and Florida. The institution’s mission is to enrich life through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education by perpetuating the survival of plants, ecosystems, and cultural knowledge of tropical regions. NTBG is supported primarily through donations, grants, and memberships.

NTBG Media contact: Jon Letman (jletman@ntbg.org) at NTBG Headquarters, Kalaheo, Hawaii

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A published study co-authored by NTBG Conservation Biologist, Seana Walsh, revealed different plant species, even ones that are closely related, require different collection strategies and many collections currently fall short of conservation targets, further highlighting the importance of botanical gardens and arboreta worldwide.

The study included 11 plant taxa among five genera, including Kauai’s two fragrant, white-flowered endemic Hibiscus taxa held in multiple collections, including NTBG’s Limahuli Garden and McBryde Garden.

Field work by NTBG staff and interns to collect samples of both Hibsicus taxa for the study was done from 2015 to 2017 and the molecular lab work for those taxa was done between 2017 and 2019 at Chicago Botanic Garden by colleagues including former NTBG intern, Susan Deans. Results for the two Hibiscus help inform optimal collection and curation sizes for organizations and institutions working together to conserve them, including NTBG. Between 38 and 58 wild individuals of H. waimeae subsp. waimeae and between 54 and 123 of H. waimeae subsp. hannerae are needed to capture nearly all of the genetic variation of the species.

NTBG’s participation in this project underscores the importance of collaboration across geographic distances and illustrates how research can help botanical gardens and arboreta work together to improve our collecting and curation strategies to protect rare plant species.

Read the full article: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.0102

Virtual Mother’s Day Bouquet

Can’t see your mom in person this Mother’s Day? Send her a virtual Mother’s Day bouquet courtesy of NTBG! Click on the links below to download and save the image. There’s 36 different options!

Want to give Mom something more on her special day? Give her the gift of NTBG

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Visit Virtually with NTBG Videos & Zoom Backgrounds

If you are working from home or spending more time in online video calls these days, add a little NTBG garden beauty to your background. Download an NTBG Zoom background today. Click on the links below to download and save the image. Then follow instructions on your preferred conference platform for installing the background image. NTBG Gardens are temporarily closed due to COVID-19. Please consider making a donation to support our critical plant-saving research and conservation.

Zoom Background Images

Allerton Garden
Kahanu Garden
The Kampong
Limahuli Garden & Preserve
McBryde Garden

Stay Connected

Follow NTBG on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to stay connected during this time of social distancing. Take a peaceful journey through our gardens in Hawaii and Florida and learn more about plant conservation by watching this video.

Support Billie’s work with the Conservation and Horticulture Center by donating today!

Conservation and Horticulture Center

Brighamia insignis is just one of the thousands of native Hawaiian plant species propagated in our Conservation and Horticulture Center. NTBG staff and volunteers care for 150,000 – 300,000 plants at a time. The climate-controlled micropropagation lab and greenhouse facilities at the Conservation and Horticulture Center in the McBryde Garden currently produce over 10,000 plants per year. Many of these plants are used for habitat restoration projects throughout the tropics.

In her free time, Ginna volunteers as a digital archivist, cataloging images into NTBG’s digital asset manager from her home in San Jose, California! She made her first trip to Kauai and NTBG in 2010 and immediately feel in love. Passionate about our mission, Ginna started her volunteer journey by making annual visits to volunteer at our annual Moonlight and Music fundraiser. In 2014, Ginna bought a home in Kekaha, giving her more opportunities to visit the garden. She’ll eventually retire to the island but in the meantime gives back to NTBG while virtually visiting NTBG as she catalogs images for our staff.

At home in California, Ginna works at Adobe as an international product manager for the Creative Cloud. She also leads Adobe’s San Jose Action Team which leads 4,000 employees at Adobe’s headquarters in fundraising and volunteer opportunities. Ginna’s volunteer work is essential to NTBG staff, providing our scientist and researchers with an easily accessible catalog of images to use in reporting and publishing their work.

Thanks for all that you do, Ginna!

Support David’s work with the Breadfruit Institute by making a donation!

Breadfruit Institute

Founded in 2003, the Breadfruit Institute promotes the conservation, study, and use of breadfruit for food and reforestation. The Institute is a global leader in efforts to conserve and use breadfruit diversity to support regenerative agriculture, food security, and economic development in the tropics and serves as the international center for breadfruit research and information resources. The Institute curates, studies, and conserves the world’s largest repository of breadfruit diversity—150 cultivars—at NTBG’s Kahanu Garden, Maui, and McBryde Garden, Kauai.

The Breadfruit Institute is also engaged in a Global Hunger Initiative to respond to critical global food security issues and deforestation by expanding plantings of good quality breadfruit varieties in tropical regions. This work is central to our participation in the Alliance to End Hunger—a coalition of 90 corporations, non-profit organizations, universities, individuals, and religious groups working to end hunger domestically and internationally.

Support Steve & Dot’s work with NTBG by donating today!

“I am a retired engineer who helped build the first cell-phone networks. (So feel free to blame me when your calls drop.) My wife Liza and I fell in love with Kaua’i on our first visit here 15 years ago, and we were finally able to move here for good last June. We are avid hikers, so as soon as lockdown is over and Waimea Canyon is open, that is where you will find us. In the meantime, I am happy to be watching our cat Beastly explore her “mew” home and helping out Matt Goodale with the Garden’s database software.”

Andy Kostic, Kalaheo, HI

Thanks for all that you do, Andy!

Support Andy’s work with NTBG by making a donation!

Specializing in molecular immunology, Dr. Jeffry Frelinger is no stranger to the laboratory. Jeff earned his Ph.D. in immunology from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor. Over Jeff’s distinguished career, he has raised multiple millions of dollars in grant funding and published over 280 books, book chapters, and journal articles, including in Science and Nature. Along the way, he even worked and published on coronaviruses in mice. Among Jeff’s numerous awards is his most recent – the American Association of Immunologists Distinguished Fellow award in which he was in the inaugural group and is in good company with Nobel Laureates as his fellow awardees.

Jeff now splits his time between volunteering in the NTBG Seed Lab and running his research Lab at the University of Arizona, where he is developing a vaccine for the fungal infection known as Valley Fever. In the NTBG Seed Lab, Jeff is tremendous help where he treats his volunteering equal to his professional responsibilities and is perfectly happy doing “undergraduate work,” yet can counsel Seed Lab Manager Dustin on higher level ideas. Jeff also provides the best banter in the Seed Lab! The unique combination of these skill sets makes Jeff a marvelous asset, and we are lucky to have him.

Thanks for all you do, Jeff!

Seed Bank and Laboratory

In alignment with the Global Strategy For Plant Conservation, the Hawaii Strategy for Plant Conservation, and the National Seed Strategy, we are investigating methods to preserve and protect Hawaiian species of conservation importance ex situ in the Seed Bank and Laboratory.

Our emphasis is determining seed and pollen storage behavior, seed longevity, and aging kinetics, seed-borne pathogen abatement, and seed dormancy and dormancy alleviation of native Hawaiian plant species of conservation importance. Our research aims to understand how seeds respond to desiccation and subfreezing temperatures, identifying regeneration intervals, and determining optimal seed propagation techniques.

Support Jeff’s work with the Seed Lab by donating today!

Support Oshibana and their mission to fundraise by donating today!