Top Navigation

News

Greenhouse Manager Missy Bidwell receives staff excellence award

Published: 
5 years 17 weeks ago
On Monday, November 4, Missy Bidwell, Greenhouse Manager of Cornell Plantations was awarded the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Research and Extension Award in recognition of her commitment to communication.  

"In her role managing the entire nursery facility, she needs to work successfully with a wide army of stake holders.  She coordinates a large core of volunteers, student workers, interns, and staff who use the greenhouse for both growing plants and teaching. Keeping the highly diverse types of plants from tropical to annuals, trees and herbaceous perennials healthy, and getting them moved into new spaces as they grow requires a high level of organizational skill. Missy is superb at bringing order to this moving target." -Mary Hirshfeld, Director of Horticulture at Cornell Plantations.

The CALS Research and Extension awards recognize a broad range of accomplishments contributing to the realization of their vision, “To be the preeminent college for research, teaching and extension of agriculture and life sciences, developing leaders to address the global challenges of the 21st century.”

New members receive a subcription to "Better Homes and Gardens"

Published: 
5 years 18 weeks ago

Bonus for you! Included with your membership or membership renewal is a one-year subscription to Better Homes and Gardens--your choice of print or digital edition. Click here to learn more.

Read "Verdant Views" online

Published: 
5 years 20 weeks ago

The Summer/Fall issue of Cornell Plantations magazine, Verdant Views, is available to view online. Click here to read this issue and past issues.

Jim Sterba, author of "Nature Wars" will speak Wednesday October 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Published: 
5 years 21 weeks ago
Jim Sterba, author of "NATURE WARS" will be speaking at Cornell University on Wednesday, October 23, at 7:30 P.M. in the Statler Hall Auditorium as part of Cornell Plantations Fall Lecture Series.

If you are among the more than four thousand drivers who will hit a deer today, or your kids’ soccer field is an unplayable mess of goose droppings, or a coyote has snatched your cat, or beavers have flooded your backyard, or wild turkeys have attacked your mailman, or bears have looted your bird feeders, you might be wondering why. As award-winning journalist and reporter Jim Sterba explains, “It is very likely that more people live in closer proximity to more wild animals and birds in the eastern United States today than anywhere on the planet at any time in history.” The trouble, Sterba tells us, in "NATURE WARS: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds" (Crown; November 13, 2012), is that modern Americans have become so estranged from nature that many of them don’t know how to cope with the wild bounty in their midst. So they battle one another over what, if anything, to do as conflicts between wildlife and people mount.

Four hundred years of colonial expansion culminated in an “era of extermination” in the late 1800s—a crescendo of forest and wildlife destruction so egregious that it spawned a backlash, the conservation movement, and an incredible turnaround. As trees took back farm land, conservationists nurtured numerous wild populations back to health. All the while, Americans were moving out of urban settings into new suburbs and beyond. By 2000, more than half the population lived neither in cities nor on farms but in a vast tree-filled in-between that demographers call sprawl. Today, as Sterba shows in "NATURE WARS", more people live in forested sprawl than anywhere else, and they coexist—not always blissfully—with growing populations of wild animals and birds. But unlike their farming forebears, modern Americans typically get their nature indirectly, from film and television shows in which wild creatures often act like humans worthy of protection even as their populations grow, causing billions in damage, degrading ecosystems, and polarizing communities.

"NATURE WARS" offers an eye-opening look at Americans’ interactions with nature and animals, illustrating how we’ve failed to be responsible stewards despite our best efforts and intentions. A deeply researched, eloquently written, counterintuitive, and often humorous look at relations between humans and nature—and the deepening chasm between the two—"NATURE WARS" will be the definitive book on how we created this unintended, sometimes disastrous, mess.

Jim Sterba will also participate in a public Deer Management Panel Discussion sponsored by Cornell Plantations and Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future to begin a dialogue about coordinated deer management within Tompkins County. The panel will feature a moderated panel discussion with experts, including Mr. Sterba, on Thursday, October 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the Ithaca High School cafeteria; the panel discussion is free and open to the public.

About the Author
Jim Sterba has been a foreign correspondent, war correspondent, and national affairs reporter for more than four decades, first for the New York Times and then for the Wall Street Journal. He lives in New York City with his wife, the author Frances FitzGerald.

Cornell Gorge Safety plan sees positive results

Published: 
5 years 22 weeks ago

In 2011, Cornell's Gorge Safety Committee created an on-going plan to increase the awareness of potential gorge dangers along with measures to make them safer. These efforts look to have been successful. Read more in the October 8 Cornell Daily Sun article "Cornell Sees Decrease in Gorge-Related Deaths."

Leading environmental advocate Peter Raven speaking about conserving species

Published: 
5 years 24 weeks ago
Internationally renowned botanist and leading environmental advocate Dr. Peter H. Raven, will speak about “Conserving Species in a Changing World,” as part of the Cornell Plantations Fall Lecture Series on September 25 at 7:30 p.m. in the Alice Statler Hall Auditorium.

Described by TIME magazine as a “hero for the planet”, Dr. Peter Raven, President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, will explore how the living world that supports us along with all other living organisms is at serious risk owing to a combination of human population growth, rising consumption rates, and the use of often inappropriate technology.

Dr. Raven’s lecture will address the fact that species are becoming extinct at an increasing rate because of habitat destruction, spread of invasive species, and global climate change.  Steps that must be taken to reach global sustainability and social justice are drastic. But Dr. Raven will suggest strategies that, if employed, will save the maximum number of species while achieving a world in which conditions will allow their survival and the perpetuation of Earth’s living systems.

Having received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2000, Dr. Raven champions worldwide research to preserve endangered plants.  He also served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.  Among the numerous awards Dr. Raven has received are the prestigious International Prize for Biology from Japan, the U.S. National Medal of Science, and the International Cosmos Prize.  He has held Guggenheim and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowships.
The author of numerous books and reports, both popular and scientific, Raven co-wrote Biology of Plants, an internationally best-selling textbook, now in its sixth edition. He also co-authored Environment, a leading textbook on the environment.

As part of Cornell Plantations Fall Lecture Series, this lecture is free and open to the public.  Parking can be found in the parking garage located on Hoy Road on the campus of Cornell University.

Click here for the complete lecture line-up.

Cornell Plantations is...

Published: 
5 years 26 weeks ago

Cornell Plantations is many things to many people. What does Cornell
Plantations mean to Cornell faculty, staff and students and Ithaca
community members? Click here to view a 3-1/2 minute video to find out.

The Buck Stops Here

Published: 
5 years 26 weeks ago
White-tailed deer were once so rare that their sightings merited newspaper headlines. These days, "there's no woody plant between my ankle and chest," says Todd Bittner, director of the Plantations' natural areas. With developments encroaching into what were once woodlands, humans and deer come into constant conflict. At Cornell, researchers are attacking the deer management problem head-on.  Read more about this program and Plantations role in the recent issue of Cornells Alumni Magazine, "The Buck Stops Here"

Judy's Day Event Postponed

Published: 
5 years 26 weeks ago

Our Judy's Day Family Event originally scheduled for Sunday, September 22, 2013 has been postponed until next year. 

Cornell Plantations seeks an exceptional leader

Published: 
5 years 28 weeks ago

Cornell Plantations is seeking an exceptional individual to serve as the
Elizabeth Newman Wilds Director to lead Cornell University’s botanical
gardens, arboretum and natural areas, Upstate New York’s premier public
garden and one of Ithaca’s major cultural institutions.  Read more here.

Donors' gift will sustain Lewis Building's legacy

Published: 
5 years 29 weeks ago
Childhood memories and knowing what it takes to maintain a historic building inspired a major gift from Plantations donors Bob Shaw ’63, MS ’64 and Anne Meads Shaw ’64. Their planned gift will establish a future endowment fund to support the upkeep of the Lewis Education Building and infrastructure and botanical collections on Comstock Knoll.

Bob Shaw grew up in Forest Home, on the outskirts of the Cornell campus. He and his brothers attended the nearby elementary school, where Bob remembers playing among the tall pines on Comstock Knoll, sledding down the hillside in the winter, and playing baseball in the school yard in the summer.  Their parents worked at the university: R. William Shaw PhD ’34 was a professor and longtime chair of the astronomy department, and Charlotte Throop Shaw MA ’36 worked in the music department.

After the school closed in 1964, the building became Plantations’ headquarters. The old playground was dismantled, but the gravel yard remained for ten years before the Robison Herb Garden was built there. Today the old school is home to our education and visitor services staff, and is named for Plantations’ first executive director, Richard Lewis.

Bob and Anne first started making gifts to Plantations in memory of his mother, who enjoyed seeing our botanical collections and gardens develop. As their 50th reunions were approaching, they began thinking about how they might do more to create a permanent source of support for Plantations. “The Lewis building and the properties around it were an important part of my early years,” says Bob. “Anne and I want to be sure that Plantations has the funds needed to maintain and preserve them over the years ahead.”

Over the next four years, Bob and Anne will add new gifts to the charitable remainder unitrust they’ve already established at Cornell. They receive income from the trust for their lifetimes, and after their deaths the remainder will be divided to support the College of Engineering and to establish the “Robert and Anne Shaw Plantations Endowment.”  We will use the payout from their endowment to maintain or improve the Lewis Building and the pathways, stairs, summer house, or other infrastructure on Comstock Knoll. The fund may also support other landscape improvements or enhance the knoll’s botanical collections.

Planned gifts can secure your future—and Plantations!

Gift planning can help you meet your financial goals while also providing Cornell Plantations with vital, long-term resources. From a simple bequest in your will to life-income agreements that can help secure your retirement, there are a wide range options.

For many donors, gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts provide the security of having a continued income stream for themselves or heirs, and significant tax savings. The charitable IRA rollover is also an option for 2013, and if you are 70-1/2 or older, you could move up to $100,000 from your IRA directly to Plantations without paying income taxes on the money.

For more information on how you can support Cornell Plantations with a planned gift, contact Beth Anderson.

Upcoming lecture focuses on trees in literature

Published: 
5 years 29 weeks ago

English professor Thomas Hill will deliver Cornell Plantations’ 2013
William H. and Jane Torrence Harder Lecture Aug. 28 at 5:30 p.m. in Call
Auditorium, Kennedy Hall and will be followed by a garden party in Plantations botanical garden.

Hill has been known to take his students outside to lie down and stare at the trees, or to cart new students from Risley Hall to the Cornell Orchards to make sure they get there sometime during college.

“A tree is not simply a natural object that we chop down to harvest its wood or eat its nuts,” Hill said. “But in literature a tree is a larger symbol of the world, in both Christian and pre-Christian writing.”

Read more in the August 19 Cornell Chronicle article, "Plantations lecture focuses on trees in literature."

Click here for the 2013 Fall Lecture Series lineup.

It's good to be green!

Published: 
5 years 30 weeks ago

Sierra Magazine ranks Cornell fifth 'coolest' school! The editors
mentioned the two gorges running through campus, the 35-acre Botanical
Garden and the 100-acre Floyd R. Newman Arboretum at Cornell
Plantations. Read the full article.

Fall Lecture Series kicks off on August 28

Published: 
5 years 30 weeks ago
Our annual Fall Lecture Series begins on August 28 and will run every other Wednesday until November 6, 2013. The first lecture will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall and will be followed by a garden party in the botanical gardens of Cornell Plantations.  All remaining lectures will take place in Statler Hall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
 
The lecture series will feature talks about Pagan trees, trendy new plants, weedless gardening, conserving species, nature wars, and plant medicines by Cornell English professor Thomas D. Hill; Klyn Nurseries President Bill Hendricks; President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden Peter Raven; renowned gardener and author Lee Reich; acclaimed journalist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and author of Nature Wars: the Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, Jim Sterba, and senior research associate at Cornell University Manuel Aregullin.  The Fall Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
 
Cornell University English Professor, Thomas Hill kicks off the series with a lecture entitled Pagan and Christian Trees: From Ambrose to “Juniper Tree.”  Professor Hills’ lecture will focus on the importance of trees in Christian thought and will be a literary history of some spiritual, cosmological and real trees in the literature of medieval and early modern Europe.
 
“Every year we work to try and bring interesting and dynamic speakers to share with our community,” stated Sonja Skelly, director of education at Cornell Plantations.  “This years line-up is no exception! We have some of the world’s leading authorities coming to Ithaca.  We hope the Cornell and Ithaca communities will join us for these exciting lectures.”

Click here for the 2013 Fall Lecture Series Line-up.

Simple tip for growing herbs: well-drained soil

Published: 
5 years 30 weeks ago

Whether you are growing herbs in pots or in your garden bed, many of the plants we like to grow are native to the Mediterranean Region and prefer soil that is well drained. Our interpretation coordinator, Sarah Fiorello, designed a new interactive display to demonstrate the benefit of soil amendments. View this two-minute video of Sarah uses the display to show how you can easily amend your soil for better drainage.

video platform video management video solutionsvideo player

A new way to tour the F. R. Newman Arboretum

Published: 
5 years 31 weeks ago
Cornell Plantations has recently completed its yearlong process of enhancements to our visitor services in the F. R. Newman Arboretum with the installation of a self-guided audio-visual tour. In addition to this self-guided tour, Cornell Plantations has installed new interpretive and way-finding signs throughout to help visitors better orient themselves and to learn more about these unique collections. These enhancements were made possible by a $20K grant from the Stanley Smith Horticulture Trust received in January 2012.

These enhancements help Plantations to better tell our story to the tens of thousands of visitors who enter our gates every year. From learning about the striped maple (Acer pennsylvanicum) a small tree with distinct vertical white stripes on its bark, which is also called moosewood, the namesake of a nearby famous restaurant; to learning that the much loved Sculpture Garden was not intended to survive past the year it was constructed in 1962, visitors will now have a much fuller and richer understanding of the amazing collections that can be found in the rolling hills of the F. R. Newman Arboretum. 

Since the completion of the Arboretum in 1981, Plantations has had limited visitor information in the arboretum to explain to visitors the importance of the plant collections found there. This grant allowed for expanded services that include new signs and mobile phone audio-visual tours to communicate the significance of the key plant collections within the 150-acre arboretum, and reveal how researchers from Cornell and around the world use these collections for scientific study.

“The aim of all interpretation in the arboretum is to emphasize the significance of plant diversity, and how plants strongly affect human well-being,” stated Sarah Fiorello, interpretation coordinator at Cornell Plantations.  “Before these interpretive upgrades in the arboretum, many visitors viewed the space as a beautifully manicured park, not as an arboretum -- with significant plant collections that are used for educational and research purposes.  It’s our hope that these visitor enhancements will help bring a fuller awareness to our visitors.”

The collections located in the F.R. Newman Arboretum include nut trees, crabapples, oaks, maples, shrubs, and urban trees.  There are also specialty gardens found in the arboretum that include the Zucker Shrub Collection and the Treman Woodland Walk.

To listen to the audio tour, visit our F.R. Newman Arboretum page and browse the collection list.  Once a collection is selected, click on the audio icon to listen to the short audio clip.

About Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust:
The Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust was created in 1970 by May Smith, in honor of her late husband. The Trust supports education and research in ornamental horticulture, primarily in North and South America. Grants up to $20,000 are typically made to botanical gardens, arboreta, and universities.

Cornell Plantations is...

Published: 
5 years 31 weeks ago

Cornell Plantations is many things to many people. What does Cornell
Plantations mean to Cornell faculty, staff and students and Ithaca
community members? Click here to view a 3-1/2 minute video to find out.

Get an update on our efforts to control invasive plants and pests

Published: 
5 years 31 weeks ago

In the July 22 Cornell Chronicle article, “Plantations seeks to control invasive plants and pests,”  natural areas director Todd Bittner paints of picture of what it takes to curb the spread of the invasive insect hemlock woolly adelgid, and countless invasive plants that threaten the health of over 3,400 acres of Plantations natural areas.

Read more here.

Plantations interim director's pineapple lily research could boost the New York nursery industry

Published: 
5 years 31 weeks ago
Chris Wien, Cornell Plantations interim director, is a professor of horticulture who experiments with cut flowers to determine which varieties hold the most promise for the state’s $6.3 billion nursery industry. He believes he’s found a winner in the pineapple lily (Eucomis). Read more about his research in the July 25 Cornell Chronicle article, "Pineapple lily could help N. Y. nursery industry bloom."

Chris Wien will serve as interim director of Cornell Plantations while the university searches for a replacement for Don Rakow, who announced his resignation on May 22. Read more here.

View gardener Josh Whitney's appearance on the Syracuse morning show "Bridge Street."

Published: 
5 years 34 weeks ago
Staff gardener Josh Whitney appeared on WSYR's weekly morning show "Bridge Street." He provided "The Plant 411" and offered tips on summer plant care. Click here to watch this four minute interview.