Inside Fort Worth Botanic Garden’s Living Collections

A great public garden can change your whole day and sometimes your whole life. We sit down with Seth Hamby, Director of Living Collections at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, to talk about the real work behind a place that feels effortless to visitors: the plant records, the people, the science, and the stories that turn a landscape into a living collection. 

We trace Seth’s path into horticulture through volunteering, fieldwork, and conservation genetics, including research on an endemic Texas prairie clover and statewide genome collecting tied to the Smithsonian Global Genome Initiative for Gardens. Then we go behind the scenes at Fort Worth Botanic Garden as it earns the ASHS HortLandmark designation, exploring what makes it a standout public garden in the Dallas Fort Worth area, from the Rose Garden and famously peaceful Japanese Garden to a rainforest conservatory and seasonal Butterflies in the Garden.

We also get practical about collections management including why GPS mapping matters and how a modern plant database supports research, education, and better visitor experiences. Seth also shares how volunteers help sustain the accredited Begonia collection and other details. We close with what we wish every student knew about careers in public horticulture, internships, and building opportunities by showing up consistently.

Subscribe for more conversations on Plants, People, Science, then share this episode with a friend who loves botanic gardens and leave us a review. What’s the public garden that always resets your brain?

Learn more about Fort Worth Botanic Garden at https://fwbg.org/.

Learn more about the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) at  https://ashs.org/.
HortTechnology, HortScience and the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science are all open-access and peer-reviewed journals, published by the American Society of Horticultural Science (ASHS). Find them at journals.ashs.org.

Consider becoming an ASHS member at https://ashs.org/page/Becomeamember!

You can also find the official webpage for Plants, People, Science at ashs.org/plantspeoplesciencepodcast, and we encourage you to send us feedback or suggestions at https://ashs.org/webinarpodcastsuggestion.

Podcast transcripts are available at https://plantspeoplescience.buzzsprout.com.

On LinkedIn find Sam Humphrey at linkedin.com/in/samson-humphrey. Curt Rom is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/curt-rom-611085134/. Lena Wilson is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-wilson-2531a5141/.

Thank you for listening!

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Transcript

Public Gardens And The Season

Curt Rom 0:11

Welcome to Plants People Science. This is a podcast of the American Society for Horticultural Science, where we enjoy and like to talk about all things horticulture. I'm Curt Rom, a university professor of horticulture at the University of Arkansas, and I'm joined today by my co-host, Samson Humphrey.

Sam Humphrey 0:32

I'm Samson Humphrey. I'm a PhD student researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and I'm one of your co-hosts. Curt, how are you doing today?

Curt Rom 0:40

I'm doing well, Samson. It's always good to connect with you, and I always look forward to our conversation. It's awesome. Oh, absolutely. You know, we it's it's fun when we talk about it. It's a horticulture time of year. I mean, you know, I uh the gardens are going great. Those of us that uh uh do field horticulture, I spent the morning out in uh my research fields and spent some time in the greenhouse, and I'm planting a new teaching demonstration garden. So it's kind of a busy time of year.

Sam Humphrey 1:10

It is. It's picnic time of year, too. My research greenhouses are like right next to the gardens. So I get to see, oh wow, look, today is very busy. A lot of people are at the gardens today. That's interesting. And so it's a lot of fun seeing everyone come and go. Um, thinking about how important gardens are, public gardens to people's mental health and to people's recreation outdoors.

Curt Rom 1:35

Yeah, public gardens are very important to us, you know, and it's a uh a large part of the horticulture discipline. I know we we often focus on uh edible crops and on our nursery crops and our commercial, uh, but the way that plants interface with people is really through public gardens and in our public landscapes. So that's why I'm kind of excited about uh today's guest as we're approaching the time for the annual conference of the American Society for Horticulture Science. It's gonna be in Dallas, Texas this year, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Uh, the metropolitan area is bookended by two really beautiful gardens. There is uh the Dallas Botanic Garden, uh, and then there is the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. And we're gonna be able to see both of those during the annual conference. And today we get to talk about the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.

Sam Humphrey 2:34

It's an exciting conversation. Let's give it a listen.

Seth Hamby’s Origin Story

Curt Rom 2:49

Well, Sam, I'm really excited about our guest today. Our guest is Seth Hamby. Seth, welcome to our podcast. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell our audience where you're at and what you do?

Seth Hamby 3:03

Hello, everyone. My name is Seth Hamby. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Kurt, for having me. Um I am the director of living collections at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Um I'm sure we'll get into all the interesting things that I do on a day-to-day basis. Um, I also am interested in antiques. I have an antique booth at a local antique mall. Um, an avid reader. Most of my life kind of centers around plants, antiques, books, you know.

Curt Rom 3:33

That sounds that sounds good. And I'm glad you're in charge of the living collection and not the dead collection. That's not a very good way for a horticulturist to be.

Seth Hamby 3:41

So well, we have an entire department devoted to the dead collections.

Curt Rom 3:46

Yeah, well, and there's gotta be a compost heap somewhere.

Sam Humphrey 3:50

So, Seth, how did you get interested in plants?

Seth Hamby 3:54

Uh well, I was born in South Carolina, very rural South Carolina, um, and spent most of my days out in the woods. Um, and I was born 1984, so I grew up in the early 90s. And back then I guess parents were a little more lenient with um letting their kids go outdoors and kind of being unsupervised. So I was allowed to kind of just go out into the woods and play for hours and just discover things on my own, um, sometimes make mistakes, um, and then make sure to be home before dark. And that's really um where my interest in plants came from. I wasn't necessarily like, oh, what is this called? Um, what is the scientific name of this or whatnot? I was just very interested in um nature itself. And then it was only years later, um, you know, I had a few issues in my late teens and early 20s, um, and got over those issues and really started devoting myself to houseplants. Um, that's really where it all started. Um got into houseplants, and I was like, oh, maybe I can make a career out of this. So I went to get a horticulture degree and then moved on from there, uh, bachelor's, master's, and then now this is what I do every day.

Curt Rom 5:22

Where'd you where'd you get your uh training at? Where'd you go to school?

Seth Hamby 5:26

So I went to Tarrant County College, Northwest. Um they have a horticulture program there, and I got the horticultural certificate from there, and then I took a year off in between um bachelors, associates and bachelors, and I did the Texas Master Naturalist training, um, and that was really another really pivotal thing that helped me in my trajectory.

Curt Rom 5:53

Yeah, that sounds interesting.

Seth Hamby 5:55

So I thought I was gonna like really just specialize in plants, but then when I did the Master Naturalist training, that got me interested in all types of wildlife and all the connections and geology and meteorology and all the things they teach you in those classes. And so I started looking around at schools and I saw that Tarleton State University, uh, a couple hours southwest of here, they offered a wildlife science program. And so I applied and got in and then did the bachelor's in wildlife science. Um and then I had an opportunity immediately after that to start a master's degree in agriculture and natural resource science. And so that's what I did. Um and do you want me to talk about the project?

Curt Rom 6:44

Yeah, tell us about your your project. That's always kind of interesting to hear. You know, that's uh the our stories, what we do that as our graduate, that kind of stimulates a lot. So tell us.

Seth Hamby 6:55

Sure.

Conservation Genetics And Genome Collecting

Seth Hamby 6:56

Um, so I I guess I can back up for a second. I used to volunteer at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, which is the research swing of the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. I volunteered there for quite some time. And there were some botanists who had told me about and were working on doing an assessment on a rare prairie clover called Daily Rivershonei, or the Comanche Peak Prairie Clover. And it's an endemic species that's um only found in eight counties in north central Texas. Um when I got the chance to do a master's degree, my uh advisor was pretty open about letting me do whatever I wanted to do. I just had to find the money to do it. So I kind of um I posed the idea of doing an assessment of all of the known populations of this plant. Um so I applied for a grant through the Native Plant Society of Texas, um, got some other donor money here and there, and was able to go to every known population of this species and collect um material, vegetative material, and uh do DNA sequencing. We really wanted to see whether or not um the three metapopulations, how closely related they were. So we did something called a double digest rad seek, or so we use restriction enzymes to cut the DNA strands at very specific locations, and then you kind of stack them all up on top of each other and you look for how they're different. Uh basically what we found is what we assumed that the two northern populations that are closer together were more closely related than the southern population. And we found out a bunch of other stuff, interesting, cool stuff too. But that was that was the main finding um of that study.

Sam Humphrey 8:58

That's fabulous. It's I'm struck by how different it is. Always in these conversations, I am exposed to these things that I have never done anything close to that. That sounds so interesting. During this time, you also uh did your first, well, it wasn't your first collections research, but you collected those genus level representative samples. Could you tell us about that project?

Seth Hamby 9:24

Yes. Um I graduated in May of 2019. Gosh, it's been that long. Um so immediately following graduation, I applied for a fellowship with a botanist here at the Botanical Research Institute named Morgan Gostell. And he was associated, still is, with the um Smithsonian Global Genome Initiative for Gardens. Um ended up getting that fellowship. And basically what we did is we took the whole summer and traveled around the state to various um natural areas, different botanic gardens, and collected um DNA samples of and vouchers, uh, herbarium vouchers of um I can't remember the exact number of genera that we we collected, but it was it was quite a bit. So we were looking for um the different genera that were not currently at that time represented in the GGI uh biorepository. Their overall goal is to have samples and sequence eventually every single plant on the planet, which is like over 300,000 species. Uh, but that's what really got me into collecting specimens. Um yeah.

Curt Rom 10:50

So you you finished

From Fellowships To Garden Leadership

Curt Rom 10:51

your master's degree, you did that project. At some point in time, uh you you got a day job, I guess. So what what what were your first day jobs? Uh or did you start working right at at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, or were there intermediate places that you worked?

Seth Hamby 11:08

So actually, throughout college I was a house painter. So that was that was fun. Um and then once I was working on my master's, I was a TA for um various classes, wildlife, uh wild and plants, um, and uh plant taxonomy classes. Uh but after I graduated and went on this fellowship, we actually went out to West Texas to a place called the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute for one of our collecting trips for that project. And on the way out there, literally on the way out there, I got a text from a friend who's associated with that garden. And they were like, Oh, they're looking for a um head gardener and plant curator uh position out there. And so I called, well, I can't remember if I called or if I emailed, but anyways, I got the interview. So while we were out there collecting plants, I got the interview, got the job, and then moved out to West Texas to work at the Chihuahua Desert Research Institute.

Curt Rom 12:16

And then where how did you get back into the Fort Worth Botanic Garden where you'd been volunteering and begin on the staff?

Seth Hamby 12:24

So I I love West Texas, I love the mountains out there, the desert. Um, I would still be there if if I could, but um it's very geographically isolated, and there aren't necessarily many opportunities to kind of move up. So I was really looking for an opportunity to um have some more leadership, um, make a little bit more money, um, take on some more higher-level responsibilities. So that's when I applied for this position.

Curt Rom 12:58

And when did when did you start there?

Seth Hamby 13:00

That would have been January four and a half years ago. Okay. So whenever that was. January of one year.

Sam Humphrey 13:08

Yeah, and I'm I'm sure your role has changed a lot since then. What do you do at Fort Worth Botanic Gardens right now?

Speaker 2 14:20 Seth Hamby 14:32

So

Turning Plants Into A Mapped Database

Speaker 2 14:33

when I first got here, um it was pretty wide open because this position was recently created. Um and they had a few things that they they really wanted me to do, which was kind of get the database in order. Um over the years, the Botanic Society and the Texas Garden Clubs had sponsored a few people who were working in the collections. Um these are actual botanists who were um studying the collections and um databasing them. Um so we had about 5,000-ish accessions. So an accession is just a unique um number that's associated with a specific species or taxa at a specific moment in time from a specific source. So it doesn't have to be one plant, it could be an accession of the same plant from the same source with 100 specimens or whatnot. Um so that's when an accession is, and we had about five, like I said, about 5,000 of those. Uh but the the problem with that database was that you weren't able to do any GPS locations. So none of the plants had GPS locations. So it was really hard to look at the database and say, oh, there's this plant here, and it has this description, this vague description of where it's generally located. It was very difficult to look at that and then compare it to what was out on the ground. Um so there was a lot of that early on, and um that took a really long time to get through that. Some of the stuff we just the accessions we just ultimately had to kind of throw out of the database because we couldn't find their correlation outside in the actual gardens. Um from that point um we just kind of systematically started accessioning and GPS locating every plant in the garden. And I think at to date we have about 14,000 accessions and over 150,000 individual plants in the database.

Fort Worth Botanic Garden Landmark Tour

Curt Rom 16:48

Wow, that's really impressive. So, Seth, as you know, this summer in August, the American Society for Horticultural Science is having its annual conference in uh nearby Dallas. And as part of our conference, uh, we're gonna visit the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and actually give it the ASHS Horticulture Landmark designation. And that's a significant thing. It commemorates sites of profound horticulture accomplishment, uh, gardens that are selected for their historic, their scientific, environmental, or aesthetic value. And so it kind of celebrates the history of a garden, the inspiring achievement of research and community engagement and outreach, it's a public appearance, appreciation, and how it stimulates interest in plants and the importance of plants in our everyday lives. So, knowing that we believe that Fort Worth Botanic Garden is a significant horticultural landmark. Tell us a little bit about the garden. How big is it? What would you say are some of its most important features, some of its most important collections?

Seth Hamby 18:04

Sure. And we are greatly appreciative of the award and we are excited to have y'all this summer. Um I guess I could start way, way back um in 1912, when part of the garden, which was a natural spring, was designated as a a park, a city park in Fort Worth. Um a few years later in the 1930s, a group of people got together um and were like, we really need a rose garden. So, and this was right around the time of the Great Depression. Um, so there wasn't a lot of funds, but there was uh civilian conservation corps program. They sent um hundreds of people out to help us construct the rose gardens. Um we quarried um stone from the local community, um, brought it over from Weatherford, like several hundred thousand tons, I think it was, um, and they constructed the rose gardens. And in 1934, it was officially opened as a botanic garden, and it is now the oldest public garden in Texas. Um another interesting thing is um there was a reflection pond. If you stand on the the Rose Garden shelter house overlook and overlook the Rose Garden, there's a huge reflection pond at the end. And we were having issues, or they were having issues in the early days of keeping water in the pond. So they actually brought an elephant named Queen Tut from the zoo, marched her down University Drive, and she stomped around in the pond. And after that, it's been holding water ever since.

Curt Rom 20:17

That's a kind of an interesting story. I mean, it's it's a really beautiful garden for people that haven't been there. I know people when they think about Fort Worth, they think about the stockyards. But uh, you know, I teach a class in public gardens, and the Fort Worth Botanic Garden is generally ranked in the top 10 uh most important and most significant botanic gardens in the United States. So you got the pond fixed, thanks to the elephant. You don't think about elephants in Texas very often. That's actually the first time I've ever thought about it. Uh what how did the collection build from a rose garden and this beautiful pond? And and what are some of the great collections right now? What are the premier collections? What's what's the garden known for?

Seth Hamby 21:02

Well, the rose garden is kind of the main attraction as well as the Japanese garden. Um, I think if I had to guess, around 60% of the people that come here um come specifically for the Japanese garden. Um so before the Botanical Research Institute of Texas took over management of the property, it was uh open to the public. You could drive your car through here, there was no charge. Um, but since we took over management, we've kind of shifted it over to a pedestrian garden. Um and there is a charge to enter, but there's a lot more amenities, there's a lot more cool things going on that we've been able to do in the last six years. Uh but most people still to this day come for the Japanese garden. Um but they don't always get to, they don't always know about all of the other important interests. Collections that we have around the garden because currently the our begonia collection, which is uh American Public Gardens Association um accredited national collection, it's the largest collection in the Western Hemisphere of the single genus genus Begonia. Um it is currently um not open to the public except for by um reservation. We hope to change that soon. But that is our premier signature collection that a lot of people know us for. And we recently held the National Um American Begonia Society convention here just a couple weeks ago, where we had hundreds of begonia aficionados touring the collection and learning about begonias. Um other interesting collections is the Tinsley Garden, which is where the original Rock Springs Park was. Um this was developed, redeveloped um about 15 years ago, and it's an all-native north central Texas plant garden and arboretum. Um so that I consider that one of our special collections, as well as the begonia collection. Um other special collections that we have, um we have a Sanseveria collection, we have a fern collection, we have an orchid collection, we have a hectea collection, a crinum collection. Um I wouldn't call it a collection yet because they're not planted, but we have tons and tons of oaks that we've received from various gardens. We have about 58 different species of oaks that are currently in pots waiting to be planted out into the garden. Um we also have the rainforest conservatory, which is attached to the main building. And this is a tropical rainforest conservatory where we have plants from all over the tropics. Um that's also a place where we have our annual butterflies in the garden. So March, April, we release thousands and thousands of tropical butterflies into the conservatory for a special program called Butterflies in the Garden. And that's that's one of our main, you know, big reasons people come uh that time of year is to see the butterflies in the garden. Um other things we have, we have 23 specialty gardens, outdoor gardens, um, notably, like I said, the rose garden, the Japanese garden, but we also have a cactus garden, a perennial garden, a trial garden, a water conservation garden, a pollinator pathway, um, a perennial garden, um native forest boardwalk, the Fuller Garden, which is a themed garden in the impressionistic style, um, that's kind of dedicated to showing the life of a person from um, I guess, adulthood to death, um, specifically a a woman's life. Um so you walk through the garden and there's various beds of different colors and themes that um showcase and evoke thoughts of various times throughout the life of a person. Um, and then um you end up kind of at the end, you go over a bridge, you look at the reflecting pond, and then you're able to look out back over the rest of the garden. It's kind of a nice themed themed garden. Um and we have uh the Brit Building, so the Botanical Research Institute of Texas building, they have a living roof, and all the plants on the living roof are from the Fort Worth Prairie, which is an imperiled ecosystem. Um I think less than 1% of this ecoregion, not ecoregion, ecotype, um, is still existing. So when they built the building, they really wanted to showcase uh native plants from Fort Worth prairie region. And there's also a prairie restoration in the back. Um all kinds of things.

Curt Rom 26:09

Well, that's it's amazing. You know, here you are in the Dallas Fort Worth metropolitan area, you know, at eight and a half million people or something. Uh and all of these gardens, you know, one one that I think anybody that goes to the garden would it's really an attraction is to see the Japanese garden. I read somewhere once, and and I mentioned it in the class that I teach when I talk about the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. It is noted as one of the quietest places in the United States. And to think it's in the middle of this metropolitan area, and that's what public gardens give to us. So really wonderful set of collections.

Sam Humphrey 26:55

I don't know if that's true of my local public garden, Curtain. I will be very excited to visit Fort Worth. I also am surprised to hear about the butterflies. I've been searching for uh a place to see butterflies here in East Tennessee, and there's there's nothing. So I don't know. I I will have to visit Dallas more often, I think, after this. But you mentioned uh the begonia collection and how it's closed off to visitors. But actually, if we have attendees at the ASHS conference that are touring, they will be able to see some of it, right?

Seth Hamby 27:31

That's correct. So we're gonna be giving tours of the herbarium at the Brit Building, which is where we house our 1.5 million herbarium vouchers, and our library collections, which we have a rare book room with thousands of um rare books, obviously, and then our general stacks. And then we'll switch out and then we'll tour the garden, hit the highlights, and then we'll probably end we'll end up in the begonia collection. So you'll everyone who comes on that tour will get a firsthand look at the begonia collection.

Sam Humphrey 28:07

Oh, that is so exciting. It must it it must be so well organized,

Begonias Volunteers And Better Plant Photos

Sam Humphrey 28:12

right? You must spend so much of your time um organizing all of these, especially you have interns working on this project too, right?

Seth Hamby 28:22

Yeah, the big the interns are working on the photography project, but on day-to-day, we have an army of volunteers who help in all over the garden, but specifically in the begonia collection. The collection started as a volunteer-led initiative back in the 70s, and it's remained that way up until today. We have about 70 volunteers on our roster for that collection. And any given Wednesday or Friday, we'll have about anywhere from six to 25 begonia volunteers, and we really could not do what we do without them. They do a lot of the care, a lot of the grooming, um, a lot of the propagation. Um, they help us. We're associated closely with the uh the May Blanton Begonia Society, which is the local chapter of the American Begonia Society. And they do a lot of promotion for us, they get people into the collection, they get people excited. Uh they're basically ambassadors for the collection, and they do a lot of the legwork. And we only have one um full-time curator. Uh, so we really wouldn't be able to do what we do without that army of passionate volunteers.

Sam Humphrey 29:40

Yeah, and Ken, just briefly, I thought this part was really cool about that photography project. What is important? Um, why do that project?

Seth Hamby 29:52

So the project is it was kind of a a brainchild between myself and the curator of the collection, um, Glenn Dickerson. So he was noticing as he was trying to look up images of begonias on the internet, that he would get a very wide range of photographs that look nothing alike, um, or he wouldn't be able to find images at all. So there is an international begonia database, but um it's kind of it's like Wikipedia where people can kind of add their own images. It's not necessarily um as curated as you would hope it would be. So that was really the the impetus for it was to get quality scientific photographs of our species begonias and get them out um to the world, hobbyists, researchers, anybody interested. Um another thing is these plants are very highly variable, even within species. Um, so you have a single species that could have four or five different forms, um different varieties, different types. And then if if you're familiar with hybridizing um with begonias, especially, you can cross two plants and get a bunch of seeds, and every single one of those little seedlings are completely different. Um they can be quite cryptic, um, they can be quite variable. So it's really important that you have scientific photographs of those anatomical characteristics that um are definitive for the species. So that's really what the impetus for driving that project was.

Sam Humphrey 31:49

Yeah, that's such important work. Thank you so much for telling us about it.

Curt Rom 31:53

Seth, where do you get the money for these kind of projects? Where does a public garden, you know, you know, what what are the financial resources? How do you take on these special kinds of projects and do the uh you know this kind of research and archiving? How does that get paid for?

Seth Hamby 32:11

Well, luckily, the as far as begonias go, from the day-to-day stuff, the Begonia Society has been very helpful. Um, they've actually supported two of the interns who are working on the photography project. They purchase a lot of the day-to-day materials for caring for the collection. Um, but in addition to that, I am not ashamed to beg or to um basically apply for any kind of grant that comes up, whether or not I think we're qualified, whether or not I think the projects fit with it, I will apply for it no matter the amount. Um I'll always take a try because you never know if maybe that year there's not many people who have applied. Um I've gotten several grants that way where I've applied, and I got it because they only had a small pool of people who had applied. So I always take those chances. Um, but specifically for this grant and then another or for this project and then for our germination project, we got an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, which is a federal grant. Um, and we applied for the Museums for America program under the subsection collection curation or collection stewardship, sorry. Um so that's where we were able to transition our plant collections database uh to IRSBG, and then I was able to hire a part-time person who is helping in that transition and helps do a lot of the accessioning and databasing. And then in addition to that, we were able to get funds to purchase photo equipment and all the things that we need to do the photo project, as well as the germination trial project that we're also doing.

Curt Rom 34:05

That's that's great. You know, oftentimes those of us that are an academic, you know, we don't think about the kind of partnerships you have to make, the uh thinking creatively for research. You know, we tend to think about uh governmentally kind of funded things. So uh it's interesting to hear you know how the kind of the work gets done in a public garden like this and the participation you get from uh corporate sponsors from uh institutions, foundations, uh your own endowment annual donors. So thanks a lot for sharing that. I I want to get back to well, we started at the very beginning. You said you're the director of living collections, and I didn't mean to make fun of that. I did, but I didn't mean to. Uh tell us about that job. You know, what does uh the day-to-day look like? What are your responsibilities as the director?

Seth Hamby 35:02

Uh that's okay. My niece says that I'm the director of all living things.

Curt Rom 35:06

So that's a great title. Yeah, keep that. You need to get a name tag for that one.

Building A Children’s Garden For Discovery

Seth Hamby 35:14

Yeah, so um, like I said before, it really started out as very um this is what we need to accomplish in this amount of time. And this, you know, these are the things that we need to do in order to accomplish those goals. But now that we've reached those goals, mostly it's kind of been morphing more into um being able to do more internships, being able to do more of these side projects, like the the scientific photography project, doing a lot more um kind of networking with other gardens and trying to build those relationships, trying to get more um eyes on to what we're trying to do here. Um, and the the Garden Explorer website is one of the products of what we've been trying to do. So that's a forward-facing website where people can visit our um collections. Basically, you can see a map while you're here and navigate to certain collections, or you can do it off site and learn about all the different species of plants we have and where they're at in the garden. And eventually we plan on adding more information, tours, um, different educational, like YouTube videos that can correspond with those. Um and then also I've been working a lot these days on one of our new projects, which is going to be opening um early next year. We'll have a soft opening at the end of this year, but officially um our Baker Martin Family Garden, which is a two and a half acre children and family garden um that's really focused around education and allowing children to kind of have free play um and learn and experience nature .

Curt Rom 37:40 Seth Hamby 37:48

The family garden has been a project that myself and our landscape designer have been really heavily involved with in um with the design and the plant selection. Uh we've selected all of the plants for the family garden, and we've even been able to grow about 22,000 plants for this project at our off-site growing facility. Um most of this early year has been dedicated to getting the plants placed and planted before the extreme heat of the summer hits. Uh so that's what we've done. We've got about, I would say, 80% of the garden planted. There's some other infrastructure things that need to be completed before we can do the rest of the planting. We'll do that in the fall before the soft opening. Uh but it's really really progressed, and I'm really happy with the results. Um, we have a lead a platinum sort of lead platinum certified education building. Uh we have a vegetable garden demonstration garden. We have a bird garden, a rain garden, a sun-powered pollinators garden, a moon and moth garden, a jam and Jupiter garden, where all the plants there are kind of planetary-themed cultivars. Um, and then we have the wild section, and this is the one that I'm really excited about. There's you can climb up onto a plateau, and all the plants there are from the Edwards Plateau ecoregion of Texas. And as you come down the plateau into the canyon, those plants are all from the Trans Pecus West Texas region of Texas. And as you come down out of the canyon into the bottomland area, that theme is the cross timbers, which is where Fort Worth is located, and all the plants there are from the cross timbers. So it's going to be a really exciting educational opportunity and an opportunity for fun because there's also a lot of um like waterworks and rivers where people can actually get in and cool off. Um, and then you can go in and um read a book or watch the birds or take a class. So it's really really exciting.

Curt Rom 40:10

Yeah, I like that concept that you can let people explore. It reminds me that uh there there was a book written in 2005 by Richard Love called Last Child in the Woods. And uh in this book, the author argued that there was a disconnection between young people and nature. And we we were becoming nature blind. And, you know, really what you just described, this ability to have this interaction, to discover uh, you know, with some guardrails, but allowing people to go out and experience it, especially children experience it. I think that's fantastic, Seth. I want to go back to something you said, uh, because I'm an academic and I I help advise college

Internships Volunteering And Career Advice

Curt Rom 40:58

students. You talked, you mentioned briefly an internship program. Does Fort Worth Botanic Garden have an internship program? And just real briefly, can you tell us about that program? And is it for college students and how do you apply or get an internship?

Seth Hamby 41:15

Yes, we have a massive internship program. We have internships available in the education department, we have internships available in the research department, the within the research department, there's specifically their herbarium, there's the Texas plant conservation internships, the seed lab internships, the library internships, and then we also have horticultural internships. Um we post those probably around March every year on our website. We try to send them out to you know colleagues and friends at universities so they can promote those. Uh but really it's kind of word of mouth where you have to be really waiting on the waiting to see when we post checking the website regularly. Uh but like I said, mid-late March is when we post all of those. And typically we have, I would say, about 15 to 20 each summer of paid internships. And those are um mostly available to undergrads, but some of them are um higher level.

Curt Rom 42:22

Okay, that's good good to know. We have several students who'd be very interested in that. A lot of interest in public gardens.

Sam Humphrey 42:31

Yeah, lots of interest. And uh there are so many students who are excited to do things that are meaningful and are looking for internships that are meaningful, and this seems perfect. I'm curious, what advice would you give to students who might be listening and who might be interested in someday doing things along the lines of what you do?

Speaker 2 43:37

.

Sam Humphrey 43:41

Yeah.

Seth Hamby 43:49

Yeah, the the main thing that I would uh say to anybody who's interested in pursuing this career is to volunteer. Um if you're able. Um Any opportunity that you can get to volunteer, any opportunity you can get to get involved in any kind of research projects or societies like the Native Plant Society, the Master Naturalist Program, the American Orchid Society, the Begonia Society, the Cactus and Succulent Society, absolutely anything where you can start to learn and start to get connected with other passionate people. You never know when those opportunities will present themselves, or the people you meet might be able to help you out in the future. So, like I said, I volunteered at the Botanical Research Institute early on. And I think that was not the reason, but one of the reasons why I was able to get on here because I had a history with the place people were able to vouch for me and they knew the quality of my work. So yeah, you never know when those opportunities are gonna arise. So just take them as you're able. Do internships. If you're at all able to do an unpaid internship and that's alter offering, then take that as well. Go out in the field. Um yeah, just take all the opportunities you can because you never know when that might benefit you in the future.

Curt Rom 45:28

That's great advice, uh Seth. Appreciate you sharing that. And I'm I I hope our audience heard that and listened to it. You know, so not every door is opened with the paying job, but maybe the volunteer understand it, understand where your passion is. That's that's really good. Well, we need to probably kind of wind up the conversation, Seth. I've really enjoyed it. Uh it was good to get to know you. Uh it's good to know more about uh the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. I've been there a couple times. I'm looking forward to seeing it uh again this summer, coming back. And Sam, when you go, uh go to the butterfly house and they've got these butterfly benches. You need to get a picture taken at the butterfly bench, and you can put that on your social media, and everybody will know at that butterfly bench that you were at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Uh, you know, congratulations to you and the staff and the leadership of the Fort Worth Botanic Garden on being designated American Horticulture, American Society for Horticulture Science, Horticulture Landmark. It's a real important designation, and the Fort Worth Botanic Garden really deserves that recognition. So, Seth, I enjoyed it. Sam, I enjoyed the conversation. Uh, really appreciate it, and we'll see you this summer.

Speaker 2 46:47

Well, thank y'all so much. I look forward to seeing y'all.

ASHS Conference Preview And Closing

Sam Humphrey 47:03

Wow, that was a fantastic episode. I am so excited for these behind the scenes tours at ASHS at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.

Curt Rom 47:12

Yeah, I think uh the members that are going it, the conference this year is starting. It's the inaugural event. It's on Sunday before the scientific conference really starts on Monday. And so it's the whole afternoon, and then there's the dedication ceremony of the ASHS designating it as a horticulture landmark, and that's really significant. So it's going to be a full afternoon out in the botanic garden, and there are obviously a lot of things to see and do there. Uh it's going to be August. It'll be warm, but uh he talked about all over those other places. I kind of imagine myself going into the Amazon Rainforest Conservatory to cool off, to fill a little bit of moisture out in that dry heat of Texas.

Sam Humphrey 48:01

Oh, it'll be so cool. It seems like they have so many different areas of that garden, too. Although it'll be hot, I'm sure it'll you'll be able to escape the heat, go to the Japanese gardens, see all sorts of things. And I've never been to a what did you call it, dedication ceremony. I've never been to one of those before.

Curt Rom 48:19

Yeah, it it's kind of quick. We we present them with a large uh bronze landmark plaque that'll indicate the date and the achievement of the garden and the reason it's being designated. So this is one of the public engagement outreach uh activities of the American Society for Horticulture Science. So we've done this around the United States. There are probably about 20, 25 uh previously designated landmarks. So it's a very prestigious kind of designation.

Sam Humphrey 48:53

Yeah, and it it really is going to something that is so meaningful. I was really struck um when Seth talked about how, you know, he had a hard time when he was younger and he found plants were part of what helped him get through it. I was thinking about, as he said that, I was thinking about our old episodes on uh horticultural therapy and how plants and working with plants and having them and you know, working with plants and with other people can be so crucial to helping people's mental health, helping people in older age stay connected with each other and helping, you know, children learn about the world around them. So public gardens like this, they really deserve that recognition.

Curt Rom 49:37

Yeah, you know, I as we were saying, you know, plant public gardens connect people to plants, but I think through that plant-people connection, it also connects it, connects us to ourselves. We understand ourselves a little better. And when we understand ourselves better, we understand uh those around us. So uh they're they're very meaningful, and I think it's gonna be wonderful. I I'm looking forward to knowing it's gonna be a busy week, going to the Japanese garden. Again, as I said during our conversation, it's regarded as one of the quietest, most peaceful places in the United States. So among the hurry and scurry of our everyday life, there's that solitude, peace, and the moment to uh reflect and think inside of the Japanese garden. So I'm really looking forward to that. So it was a great conversation, don't you think, Sam?

Sam Humphrey 50:33

I think so. I think after this, I'm going to have to spend some time in my in my public garden that's right behind my university. You know, everything's blooming, and I'm sure it won't be as impressive as the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, but it really does scratch an edge.

Curt Rom 50:49

I encourage all of our listeners to find their local or regional botanic garden and go out and explore. You should consider joining and uh enjoying the garden and the environment around us. And if this interview resonates with you, I highly recommend that you consider joining the American Society of Horticulture Science, or if you're a member, making sure to renew your membership. You can join and become part of interest groups. Like today we talked about public gardens. We have a public horticulture interest group, but also related interest groups such as Consumer Horticulture and Master Gardener, the Ornamentals and Landscape Interest Group, the Floriculture Interest Group. All kind of intersect with these disciplines. If you'd like more information about the American Society for Horticultural Science in General, go to our website, ashs.org. And that's it. This is Curt Rom and Samson Humphrey. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you soon, Sam.

Sam Humphrey 51:55

I'll see you, and I hope to see our listeners in Dallas.

Curt Rom 52:03

The ASHS podcast, Plants, People, Science, is made possible by member dues and volunteerism. Please go to ash.org to learn more. If you're not already a member of the ASHS, we invite you to join. ASHS is a not-for-profit, and your donations are tax deductible.

Sam Humphrey 52:28

This episode is hosted by Samson Humphrey and Curt Rom. Special thanks to our audio engineer, Andrew Sheldorf, our research specialists, Lena Wilson and Andrew Sheldorf, our ASHS support team, Sara Powell and Sally Murphy, and our musician, John Clark. Thanks for listening.