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Throughout a year where the only predictable thing has been change, your ongoing support of the Atlanta Botanical Garden has been a reassuring constant, making it possible for us to continue sharing the beauty, peace, and power of renewal that only nature can provide. Please take a moment to see a few ways that your commitment to the Garden has sustained our community in 2020. And accept our heartfelt thanks for your generosity, for all of the moments of solace and inspiration that hundreds of thousands have found at the Garden this year.
Dollars to Digital
Your 2020 gifts to the annual fund were transformed into digital life science content which engaged Atlanta’s students when they shifted to learn from home both during and after the spring semester shutdown. When all in-school programming and in-Garden field trips ceased in March, your giving provided foundational support to Garden educators who creatively implemented a Science at Home curriculum that was shared broadly with more than 700 teachers and their school districts in our community. This exciting series of videos and lesson plans made use of materials easily found in nature or at home to show how to extract DNA from a strawberry, or use eggs to demonstrate osmosis and how frogs “drink” through their skin. Programming can be found at atlantabg.org/science-at-home/. Now that school has started in various forms across the state, educators are hooked and have signed up by the hundreds for virtual tours and classes to continue to bring the Garden “home” for their students. Garden educators expect to reach more than 30,000 schoolchildren in 2020 thanks in part to your support of the annual fund.
Seeds of the future
State-of-the-art laboratories are cornerstones of the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Southeastern Center for Conservation. Your annual fund dollars help to keep Conservation Genetics, Micropropagation, and Seed Bank laboratories humming with activity. Conservation staff have been able to continue their work monitoring imperiled native plant populations while collecting samples for the Conservation Seedbank and DNA Biorepository, all the while respecting COVID-19 safety protocols. These on-site labs are active spaces where Garden scientists work and provide invaluable training and experience to undergraduate interns on various ways to preserve our plants for the future.
Garden scientists continued to collaborate with laboratories at Georgia Tech to conduct non-destructive MicroCT scans and x-rays to determine seed viability for cryopreservation. Per Dr. Emily Coffey, the Garden’s Vice President of Conservation and Research, “With one in five plant species estimated to be threatened with extinction worldwide, seed banking is incredibly important work—it is critical for us to conserve a concentrated cache of genetic diversity from our most endangered plants. This is the truest insurance of last resort against the strain climate change continues to place on our natural systems.”
School Programs Coordinator Zana Pouncy made a Science at Home “hotel” tutorial for young audiences to learn the importance of protecting local pollinators.
Jason Ligon, Micropropagation & Seed Bank Laboratory Coordinator tests viability of Sarracenia seedbanking. Non-destructive X-ray viability tests illuminate the variability among seeds collected plants within a single population. Above, viable seeds appear white while empty or inviable seeds test provides better information for those seeds stored in the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s seed bank.
Sarracenia alabamensis before collected from individual seeds appear gray. Each bank.
Freshening up the Orangerie
Adjacent to the main lobby of the Fuqua Conservatory, the Garden’s Orangerie has long housed a bounty of plants with economic, medicinal, industrial, and cultural importance from the tropical regions of the world. Traditional societies rely on plants for many staples of life, not just food and spices, but also medicine, fuel, dyes, fiber, and so much more. While the Orangerie has always exhibited a fascinating collection, our Horticultural and Education teams recognized that this jewel of a space could present a much more cohesive and compelling narrative, centered around the Garden’s mission to highlight the connections between people and plants.
In 2020, annual fund contributions supported a complete restoration of the Orangerie. The facilities were upgraded with improved climate control and ventilation, new electrical systems, and enhanced lighting. The botanical displays were thoughtfully redesigned while maintaining the core principles of the collection, expanding the diversity of species, and creating new mixed plantings of similar uses. New, larger glazed pots feature collections such as the insect-repelling Neem Tree (Azadirachta indica) and Citronella (Pelargonium citrosum) as well as essential medicinal plants such as the malaria-fighting Quinine (Cinchona pubescens). Species new to the exhibit include dwarf varieties of Mango (Magnifica indica), Avocado (Persia americana), Star Fruit (Averrhoa carambola), and Coconut (Cocus nucifera). Updated identification labels and fresh interpretive signage provide the finishing touches for the renovation. Far beyond an aesthetic facelift, the Orangerie now offers a multifaceted educational experience that sparks the imagination and delights all five senses.
Increasing Visitation, Expanding Plant Collections
Five years ago, the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Gainesville location opened to the public, and since that time, the display gardens have flourished while family-friendly programming has grown increasingly robust. One of this year’s “silver linings” is that more local residents are looking for getaways closer to home, and as a result, the Gainesville garden has set all-time monthly attendance records, including significant numbers of first-time visitors. Many families are drawn to the new Ada Mae Pass Ivester Children’s Garden, a hilltop destination that truly has something for all ages. In addition to fun climbing structures, whimsical water play, and opportunities for adventure, the Children’s Garden is full of botanical delights and inspirational horticultural design, with an abundant array of trees, flowering shrubs, and perennials not commonly found in southeastern gardens.
Annual fund dollars help to sustain the Gainesville garden’s behind-the-scenes greenhouse and nursery operations, where extraordinarily diverse plant material is grown from seeds and cuttings. Thanks to your contributions, a total of 75 trees and shrubs were installed along the Sweetbay Drive entry road this year—and hundreds of additional plants were propagated in Gainesville for planting on-site and in Midtown, enhancing the beauty and diversity of your favorite garden spaces.
Thank you for being part of the Garden family! Together we are moving forward on the journey to a healthier, greener world.
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