FROM 



THE BOARD 



A 



A Tropical Vision 



Tom Price 



s summer approaches, I would 

 like to focus our members' attention 

 to a different part of the world. 

 When I graduated from UNH 

 Thompson School in 1981, I tra- 

 veled to Costa Rica looking for my 

 distant uncle, Robert G. Wilson. All 

 I knew about him was that he had 

 built himself a garden called "Las 

 Cruces Botanical Garden." The 

 name has since changed to "^rhe 

 Robert and Catherine Wilson Gar- 

 den." 



Robert Wilson's being my great- 

 uncle had great interest for me 

 since I was family and he and his 

 wife had no children. The fact that 

 I had graduated with a Plant 

 Science Degree made my appren- 

 ticeship a must. So for six months 

 I lived in his house and worked at 

 his side daily in the activities re- 

 quired to keep a ten-hectare (ai> 

 proximately 25-acre) botanical gar- 

 den from growing over. 



Briefly, Robert G. Wilson was born 

 in 1911, grew up in Waltham, Mass- 

 achusetts, and graduated with the 

 class of '29. He then attended the 

 Stockbridge School of Agriculture. 

 After various jobs — from working the 

 rubber trees in Haiti to growing or- 

 anges in Nassau, Florida — he finally 

 settled down and ran a successful 

 nurser)' business called "Fantastic 

 Gardens" in Miami. 

 In 1968, Bob sold the business and 

 moved to Las Cruces, Costa Rica — a 

 remote place near the border of 

 Panama. There he spent the rest of 

 his life collecting plant specimens 

 and building the garden. His sole 

 purpose was to preserve potential or- 

 namentals that were being lost be- 

 cause of slash-and-burn farming. 

 Robert Wilson died in 1989. 



Now for a brief explanation of what 

 the gardens do. In Spanish, Jardin 

 Botanico Wilson is located in mid-el- 

 evation b-opical rain forest along a 

 spur ridge of the coastal range 207 

 miles from San Jose. Aroids, palms, 

 ferns, gesneriads, bromeliads, heli- 



Robert Wiknn ui lusginden. 



conias, and marantas are well repre- 

 sented on the ten hectares of culti- 

 vated grounds. The parterres of the 

 mosaic-like display of Bromeliaceae 

 are based on designs of Roberto 

 Burle-Marx, the Brazilian landscape 

 architect and a personal friend of 

 Wilson's. This display inspired the 

 general layout of the entire garden. 

 Hie over 1000 genera in some 200 

 plant families in this extraordinary 

 collection drew botanical societies 

 and natural history visitors to the gar- 

 den. In 1973, the Organization for 

 Tropical Studies, an international con- 

 sortium of universities, assumed own- 

 ership. 



Today, it is one of their three biologi- 

 cal field stations. 



Having survived the deforestation 

 and agricultural development of the 

 surrounding region, the garden and 

 its adjacent forest reserve of 145 

 hectares are highly valued for the 

 large number of native plants (2000 

 species) and vertebrates (220 bird 

 species and 80 mammals) living 

 tiiere. Over 3,000 types of moths and 



butterflies have been found in 

 the area. 



In 1983, UNESCO declared 

 the garden part of the Amistad 

 Biosphere Reserve— 472,000 

 hectares (1,165,840 acres) of 

 parklands and buffer zones 

 along the mountainous back- 

 bone of southern Costa Rica 

 and northern Panama 

 Tlie garden acts as a center for 

 botanical, agro-ecological, and 

 horticultural research, scien- 

 tific training, and public educa- 

 tion. Plant species threatened 

 with habitat loss and extinc- 

 tion are maintained for future 

 reforestation efforts both in 

 greenhouses and in the wild. 

 The garden's collections, ex- 

 perimental plots, and proximity 

 to a major, largely unexplored 

 park offer a range of opportun- 

 ities for work in conservation 

 biology. 

 Tlie Wilson Garden holds a wealth of 

 knowledge that is too valuable to ig- 

 nore. I believe that the people in 

 our field should support this type of 

 organization since it is focused on 

 preserving potentially ornamental 

 species of plants. 



If you would be interested in visiting 

 the garden, it is a wonderful place for 

 a vacation. Accommodations are 

 available if you choose to stay there. 

 The rate — which includes three 

 meals — is only $45 per day. For more 

 information, write: Organization for 

 Tropical Studies, Apartado 73, San 

 Vito de Saba, Costa Rica, 77-3278. 

 Every day when I go into the green- 

 houses, I go back for a moment in 

 time and remember the misty wet 

 mornings and feel the green energy 

 that the tropical rain forest gives off. 

 You really have to go there to know 

 what that is actually like. 



Tom Price is at Meredith Gardens, RFD 

 1. Center Harbor, NH 03226. He is 

 currently President of the Plant Growers' 

 Association. For more information, call 

 Tom at (603) 284-7709. ^ 



June/July 1991 3 



