giving in action
“From a small seed a may grow” mighty trunk
– Aeschylus
Small seeds, big impact
Your gifts support small seeds of all kinds at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Unrestricted annual support is essential to providing the ideal conditions for our programs to germinate and flourish, from visions of horticultural displays that we all enjoy when we visit with a friend or come for a class to the meaningful educational programming that inspires the next generation of environmental stewards. Your contribution toward growing a beautiful garden also provides the framework for missiondriven initiatives that reach beyond our gates, bringing some of our smallest visitors onsite to enjoy the scents and sounds of the Garden.
Back after a hiatus during the early stage of the pandemic, Kinder in the Garden invites every Atlanta Public School kindergarten class to the Garden for a free visit during the school year. New this year is a government-funded partnership with Cultural Kaleidoscope, a program that provides outings to Atlanta’s cultural institutions for every Fulton County student. With your annual support, the Garden’s “living museum” continues to grow as a top field trip destination for our community’s young people, with 100% of Garden admission fees covered for all students and teachers from Title I schools. Your dollars have seeded the wonder of wandering through the majestic canopy of one of Atlanta’s oldest mature hardwood forests, and the enchantment of being immersed in the grandscale terrarium that is the Fuqua Conservatory. Annual gifts, both large and small, make an enormous impact on these programs, and we thank you for your support.
Mighty trunks anchor Atlanta’s urban oasis
When strolling through the Garden, bright blooms often steal the show, particularly when they carpet the ground or capture your gaze, providing the perfect pop of color. Shifting your focus upward can be just as rewarding. The next time you visit, take some time to behold the branches, reflect on the foliage, and see our botanically-rich collection of trees in a whole new light.
Extensive planning is required to ensure the long-term health of the multi-layered overstory, midstory, and understory plants, from the towering hardwoods arching over the Kendeda Canopy Walk to the rare dwarf conifers flanking the Great Lawn. Trees are a key part of our Plant Collections Policy and are integral to the Garden experience, adding interest upon close inspection and framing the views from every indoor and outdoor vantage point. Since trees typically live for decades, or even centuries, they require expert care and sustained investment, supported in large part by your contributions.
Tropical and temperate palms represent one of the Garden’s most noteworthy collections, consisting of 260 specimens from around the world with specific derivation from tropical islands in the southern hemisphere including the Seychelles, Borneo, Madagascar, New Caledonia, and New Guinea. In addition to elevating the magical ambience of the Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory’s Tropical Rotunda with an essential overstory canopy, this diverse group of plants has great educational and conservation value.
Under the umbrella of our Plant Collections Policy, a new five-year Curatorial Plan was recently adopted for expanding and refining our tropical and temperate palms collection, and perhaps equally as important, a 30-year Succession Plan articulates a strategy for the replacement of older, oversized palm specimens and the acquisition of diverse new species. You can see your Annual Fund dollars at work as you hunt for exciting additions such as the bright red crownshaft of Cyrtostachys renda; the fishtailshaped leaves of the understory palm (Calyptrocalyx hollrungii); the fiery-hued new leaflets of the Flame Thrower palm (Chambeyronia macrocarpa); and a spectacular trunkless palm with sharply pleated foliage known as Johannesteijsmannia magnifica.
Chambeyronia
Johannesteijsmannia
Cyrtostachys renda
Chambeyronia macrocarpa
Johannesteijsmannia magnifica
A place to Learn and Grow
The Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Gainesville location, just 50 miles northeast of our flagship campus in Midtown, is stunning in every season, with more than 20 acres of beautifully curated public display gardens and scenic woodland trails. Thanks to generous support from donors like you, it is also a rich laboratory for learning about plants, pollinators, and so much more.
This spring, a dynamic calendar of events enlivened the Gainesville garden, with popular activities planned around a special exhibition of Sean Kenney’s Nature Connects Made with LEGO® Bricks. Guests marveled at a cleverlyconstructed, show-stopping peacock, a monumental monarch butterfly, and 13 other larger-than-life sculptures crafted from standard, commercially-available LEGO® bricks. Discovery Stations featured opportunities for visitors to witness the wonder of cells—nature’s very own building blocks—magnified by a microscope and projected on a screen, while Nature Connects-themed sensory bins and scavenger hunts captivated young children as well as the young at heart.
With the hiring of a new Education Coordinator in Gainesville this year, programming has been elevated to focus on science-infused fun. Activities this Fall range from puppet
Banking for the Future
Investing in the Garden’s annual fund helps to safeguard seeds from imperiled plant species across the southeastern United States, the Caribbean islands, and regions of South America. Working at the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Southeastern Center for Conservation, our Micropropagation and Seed Bank Laboratory Coordinator and Conservation Laboratory Supervisor oversee the critical process of seed collection and long-term storage. Contributions help to support their salaries and the technology that allows the Garden to be a leader in the conservation of the genetic diversity of our region’s most rare and endangered plants.
More than a dozen scientists collect seed and germplasm during their work in the field throughout the year. Following guidelines established by the Center for Plant Conservation, no more than 10-percent of a plant’s available seed is collected for research or banking, which makes capturing the genetic diversity of an imperiled population an ongoing priority. Seed that has been collected in-situ, or in the wild, is then brought back to the Garden to be immediately cleaned, dried, and tested for viability via germination trials, chemical stains, or x-ray scans, before being accepted for preservation in the seed bank’s -20° C freezers. Seedbanking contributes to a
shows and musical performances on Family Fun Days to all-new Tinkergarten programs, which provide purposeful outdoor play experiences for early learners. And it’s never too late to learn something new! Gainesville’s adult education classes now include container gardening, needle felting, soap making, digital photography, evergreen wreath-making, and holiday floral design. With staffing made possible through your support, this growing array of program offerings is planting the seeds for lifelong learning.
Collecting Bishopweed, P. ahlesii, seed in the field.
species’ chance of survival in the wild, and your annual fund donations greatly strengthen the efforts of scientific researchers, conservation horticulturists, and land managers, while also promoting richer and more diverse landscapes for future generations.