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Accomplish Your Gardening Goals for the New Year by Starting a Garden Journal

The New Year is a wonderful time to refresh, make goals for the year ahead, and get more yourself organized. If gardening is an area where you could use more organization, a garden journal is a wonderful solution. In addition to helping with organization, garden journals can help you increase productivity in your garden, collect…

Discover + Share: The Best of 2018

2018 was a year of change and growth at the Missouri Botanical Garden. We celebrated the opening of our historic Museum building, along with new rooms in Tower Grove House. There were big anniversaries and new events. Our commitment to plant science grew as our researchers described new species and worked to protect them. Our…

Spotlight on Science: Ashley Glenn

Ashley Glenn, Research Specialist, William L. Brown Center For many people, holidays bring warm memories of a delicious meal shared with family or friends. Maybe it’s a Christmas feast or traditional Hanukkah foods. For Garden Scientist Ashley Glenn, the holidays mean Christmas cookies baked with heirloom recipes and time spent making and jarring gallons of…

Caring for Your Cut Christmas Tree

Choosing a fresh fir over a plastic pine for your Christmas tree has some definite perks. There’s the chance to make special memories cutting a tree down at a farm or carefully choosing the right one from a lot. And, of course, there’s the irreplaceable fresh evergreen smell that comes with a cut Christmas tree….

Veg Out for the Holidays

With the holidays upon us, many families and friends are planning gatherings and celebratory meals—most of them likely centering on meat. To help make this holiday season more sustainable, the EarthWays Center suggests adding some vegetarian and vegan alternatives to your dinner table. Why Eat Less Meat? Vegetarians and vegans are familiar with the question—why…

Plant Profile: Holly

It’s a plant perhaps best known for decking the halls, but holly goes far beyond holiday decorations.

From the Library: Rebuilding the Bateman Book (Part 6)

Conservation work on the Peter H. Raven Library’s copy of The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala is underwayhas! Follow along as we document this painstaking restoration of one of the largest and grandest volumes in the Garden’s rare book collection. Putting Bateman Back Together Now that the leaves of Bateman’s Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala have been…

Sipping on Gin and Juniper

The addition of juniper was by design, and perhaps good marketing because it had long been revered for its medicinal properties.

Recycle Responsibly

An Update You Can Use from the EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden Many of us recycle—a good habit that keeps getting better. But while recycling is geared to handle a wide range of materials, your recycling bin is not a catch-all. The Garden’s EarthWays Center joins with OneSTL recycling partners all over St….

When to Prune Your Hydrangeas

As you’re winding down gardening during the colder weather, it’s a great time to think about pruning your plants. Knowing exactly when to prune plants can be tricky, and varies plant by plant, prompting many questions for home gardeners. Specifically, many want to know if winter is the best time to prune hydrangeas, or if…

Spotlight on Science: Dr. Aaron Floden

Dr. Aaron Floden Assistant Scientist, Flora of Missouri When Aaron Floden first started collecting plants, he purposefully chose a geographic area with low collection numbers. In fact, the 498 square mile area only had about 300 documented species. By the time Floden finished, that number surpassed 1,500 species, including seven species not previously known to…

The Garden and the Great War

2018 marks 100 years since the end of World War I. Although far away from the battlefields of Europe, the Missouri Botanical Garden was not immune to the ripple effects of this great conflict. The Garden Gets Involved More than a dozen people associated with the Garden were called to serve after the United States…