Director's Message

Winter 2011

We continue to bask in the celebratory glow of developing Tower Hill Botanic Garden for 25 years. The breadth of accomplishment and changes in our first quarter century has been beyond extraordinary. Those of you familiar with Tower Hill from the beginning are fully aware of how our beautiful little farm has grown to be a garden of national importance and of “world class” quality. Those of us who have been involved from the beginning are so immersed that the changes seem to flow with turtle-like progression.

Discovery of and benefit from the garden, beyond the loyal core of members and their friends has been steady as well. As the garden has grown so has the membership and so has attendance. We are proud of the diversity of garden styles and the collections of plants they embrace and nurture. The ornamental gardens, vegetable garden and orchard, and the native plant garden, wildlife garden, and shade garden are features we should all be justifiably pleased with.

Throughout the development of the garden we have made a concerted effort to create landscapes that have universal appeal, and will strike a chord with the growing diversity of our audience. This year more than any other we have observed an increase in young families, and individuals from a broad spectrum of nationalities, ethnicities, and physical abilities. A woman from India stopped to tell me her visit to Tower Hill was the first positive experience she had walking through an American garden. I asked her why this was; her answer: “the diversity of the landscape and the logical arrangement of the gardens.” Receiving such feedback is a great reward for many years of labor.

Thank you for your support of Tower Hill Botanic Garden!

~John Trexler, Executive Director