After nearly 90 years of collaborative partnership, the Arboretum Foundation and the ������Ƶ Botanic Gardens announced Friday that they will combine operations under a single nonprofit organization: Seattle Botanic Gardens. An Operations and Management Agreement, approved by the Arboretum Foundation Board on Jan. 6, 2026, and by the ������Ƶ Board of Regents on Jan. 8, 2026, establishes a new relationship for these organizations, marking an important milestone in one of Seattle’s longest-running institutional partnerships.

“Seattle is a place where nature and the urban environment intersect in an exceptional way,” said Maribeth O’Connor, board president of the Arboretum Foundation. “Whether you’re a visitor seeking quiet refuge or a scientist studying the vital connections between people and plants, the Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture are a natural treasure.”

The Washington Park Arboretum is jointly managed by the Arboretum Foundation, the UW Botanic Gardens and the City of Seattle. Under this new agreement, Seattle Botanic Gardens will continue to work in close partnership with the UW and Seattle Parks and Recreation on the stewardship of the Arboretum and its collection. This agreement strengthens the organization’s ability to serve as an effective partner to the City of Seattle, stewarding urban green spaces and contributing research-backed solutions to environmental challenges facing the region.

“The ������Ƶ has been a steward of botanical science and education in the Pacific Northwest for generations,” said Maggie Walker, a member of the UW Board of Regents. “This partnership ensures that this important work continues and grows, while allowing the University to maintain its deep connection to research, teaching and community engagement through these extraordinary living collections.”

For Seattle’s broader community, this means expanded access to nature, science and cultural experiences. As a unified organization, Seattle Botanic Gardens will have greater capacity to offer diverse programming — from youth education and summer camps to volunteer opportunities and cultural celebrations — while maintaining free public access to the Arboretum and gardens. It will be better positioned to invest in facilities, amenities and transportation options that make these spaces more welcoming and accessible.

The UW Botanic Gardens currently owns and maintains the plant collections of the Washington Park Arboretum, conducts plant conservation research, and provides educational programming in the Washington Park Arboretum and at the Center for Urban Horticulture. The Arboretum Foundation provides funding for the horticultural and education programs of the UW Botanic Gardens and supports visitor engagement at the Arboretum and Japanese Garden. Together, the two organizations have shared volunteer resources, outdoor and indoor spaces, and collaborated on initiatives ranging from the Fiddleheads outdoor preschool to public art installations like the John Grade Union sculpture.

The new organization will manage and operate three locations: the 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum, the Seattle Japanese Garden and the Center for Urban Horticulture, which includes the 74-acre Union Bay Natural Area. Together, these sites attract hundreds of thousands of visitors annually and serve as vital resources for recreation, education, conservation and scientific research.

“This change unites the robust fundraising, advocacy, and volunteer network of the Arboretum Foundation with the horticultural expertise, strong public programming, and impactful conservation research of the UW Botanic Gardens,” said Christina Owen, director of the UW Botanic Gardens. “The result will be something extraordinary — a destination botanic garden for Seattle that provides an exemplary visitor experience, meaningful research and inclusive access to some of our city’s most treasured green spaces.”

The organization is currently conducting a national search for its first CEO/president, who will lead Seattle Botanic Gardens into this new chapter. All current permanent UWBG employees will be offered employment by the new organization.

For more information, contact Maribeth O’Connor, board president, Arboretum Foundation at BoardPresident@arboretumfoundation.org, or Dan Brown, director, UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at danbro@uw.edu.

Botanical gardens historically are exclusive spaces, but the ������Ƶ is working to change that.

Many gardens originated as private spaces for predominantly white and wealthy individuals, said UW Botanic Gardens director . The collections were often curated through a process of stealing and renaming before the gardens were gifted as land to cities and universities.

“There’s a history of colonialism in many botanic gardens,” said Owen. “That is the bedrock on which we’re standing. Plants and collections that exist throughout the world were collected in ways that did not honor the people and did not honor the plants themselves. They’re driven by the colonial age. That’s a history that all gardens must grapple with.”

That’s the challenge for the , which includes both the Washington Park Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture. When Owen was hired in July 2021, UWBG already had an Equity and Justice Committee and was organizing an ongoing speaker series, , which explores how public gardens can evolve to meet the needs of local communities.

Owen is shifting the focus from bottom-up initiatives to work that is supported with and through leadership.

“Part of what we’re looking at is having regular updates with our leadership team,” Owen said, “and having the leadership team get more engaged in equity and social justice work and developing better onboarding. One of my big long-term goals is to see an increase in the diversity of staff. I think that starts with us and making sure that our culture is supportive for candidates of color and for employees of color.”

That is a major barrier for public gardens, according to a recently published by the , an initiative housed at Denver Botanic Gardens that helps public gardens become more accessible spaces. The upcoming report found that lack of institutional diversification could be addressed through adjustments to hiring processes and procedures.

“The other piece is the need for training and professional development,” said , director of the IDEA Center and a speaker in UWBG’s New Directions series. “The way to support intuitional diversification is through training. The other part is organizational culture and leadership — the awareness that there needs to be an internal culture shift as a key step.

“There’s a lot of fear, a lack of buy-in or resistance to change. You can do all the training and all the changes you want, but it’s basically superficial unless there’s a culture change.”

A new direction

The New Directions speaker series started in May, with past guests addressing topics like engaging with local Indigenous populations, youth leadership development, job training programs and opportunities for public land to support urban food systems and engage with BIPOC communities.

Sean M. Watts, principal of SM Watts Consulting and co-founder of , will give the final talk on Sept. 20. Watts’ lecture will explore how public gardens can support the work to drive environmental and land use policy and help white-led organizations act on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I think we’re learning a lot about the priorities of the communities that we want to connect with,” said adult education supervisor for UWBG. “I’m realizing that if we’re going to build relationships, we need to be addressing the priorities of those communities.”

Plummer suggested ending the speaker series with a town hall, which is now scheduled for Sept. 21. The half-day, co-creative workshop will help create an action plan to address community challenges.

“We invite people from within the region,” said Plummer, who plans to use the town hall as a prototype, “and we start by saying, ‘What were some of the big things that really resonated from the lecture series? What do we want to change? Can we set some actions?’”

UWBG’s outreach will continue on October with the . This year’s event will focus on bridging the gap between tribal practices and local government. The Coast Salish people have been included in the planning.

“We’re going to be looking at Indigenous people’s access to and role in the management of the local urban forests,” Farmer said. “We’re looking at an identity shift for our organization, but we need to hear from others in the community and not have it be an insular conversation.”

Growing gardens

UWBG has collections from around the world. In the alone, visitors can view plants from Cascadia, Australia, China, Chile and New Zealand.

“It’s important to be intentional and thoughtful about these plants and places, how they’re collected and grown and the meaning to the people that are from there,” Owen said.

The history of how corrected were curated has factored into the explicit and implicit exclusion from botanical gardens, said Farmer. UWBG is working to undo a perception of exclusivity by hosting programs like the speaker series and holding a summer camp that offers scholarships and is otherwise filled through a lottery system.

UWBG also launched . Each meeting is centered around a single topic — examples include the colonial past of botanical gardens, segregation in Seattle and problematic plant names — and Equity and Justice Committee members distribute resources and materials for staff to view before attending the discussion.

“It’s really helped establish some common goals and common identity around this work,” Farmer said. “Previously, some on our staff felt like diversity, equity and inclusion work was the role of our education and outreach team but didn’t see how it fit into their work with facilities or horticulture. It’s really helped the gardeners see how much of an ambassador they are to the public when they’re out on the grounds.”

For more information, contact Owen at crowen@uw.edu or Farmer at jsfarmer@uw.edu.

Pumpkins are part of a large and varied family. The��cucurbitaceae family includes melons, cucumbers and squash as well as the orange pumpkin that we’re accustomed to seeing around Halloween.

, UW Farm manager, talks in this video about the different varieties of winter squash — from the palm-sized pie pumpkin to Cucurbita maxima, which can produce giant pumpkins.

In addition to ample water, sun, good soil and genetics, farmers encourage the growth of giant pumpkins by removing most of the pumpkins on a vine and allowing the plant to focus its energy on just a few fruit. A pumpkin blossom also needs to be visited an average of 10 times by a pollinator to form a fruit. For that reason, ��plants sunflowers among its pumpkin rows to attract bees.

Acworth said that most pumpkins are edible, though the smallest varieties are usually the tastiest. Pumpkins also make great feed for livestock, and the seeds can even have medicinal qualities for humans.

“In other parts of the world, ground pumpkin seeds are used as a natural parasitic,” she explained.

Acworth recommends roasting pumpkin seeds for an autumnal snack — that is, if you aren’t saving them to grow your own pumpkins next year. She thinks cucurbitaceae are among the easiest plant family to grow and encourages people to try growing pumpkin, squash or zucchini at home.

Journal of American Medical Association lauds personal essay by UW Medicine’s Dr. Roberto Montenegro, ‘My Name is Not ‘Interpreter”��

The Journal of the American Medical Association has named a powerful first-person essay by UW Medicine’s one of the top pieces from the last 10 years in the journal’s ongoing “A Piece of My Mind” series.

His essay, “‘,” was published in May of 2016. The article has been reprinted in the journal’s “A Piece of My Mind” , celebrating and reprinting the editors’ 40 favorite essays from the last 10 years.

In the essay, Montenegro describes his experience being the target of microaggressions based on his appearance, and his realization that he unwittingly committed them as well. Microaggressions, he wrote, “do not respect boundaries — they exist in our personal, academic and work lives and are detrimental to the training and well-being of our colleagues and trainees.”

He concludes with the challenge to reflect on how we perceive each other, in order to shift the conversation about microaggressions “from taboo to mutual understanding.”

He added: “I have no doubt that in our practice of healing, we have the capacity to compassionately listen to one another and further this discourse for the sake of our trainees, colleagues, patients and profession.”

***

Botanic Gardens’ Rare Care program honored by Washington Native Plant Society

The Washington Native Plant Society has chosen Rare Care, a program of the , for its for 2020.

Rare Care is short for and includes a team of more than 200 volunteer citizen scientists who fan out each summer to study and document plant populations across the state. Rare Care volunteers also collect the seeds of rare plants for permanent storage at the UW.

The Rare Care program is overseen by , associate director of the Botanic Gardens, and is the volunteer and outreach coordinator.

The native plant society gives the award each year to an agency, organization or individual who has made significant contributions to native plant conservation, research or education in Washington state.

***

Jackson School’s Hellmann Task Force prompts possible policy change in Ghana

It’s not often that work by UW students and their professor affects the very policies of another nation. But that might be the case for the Jackson School’s and The Republic of Ghana, in Africa.

The Task Force program is the school’s undergraduate capstone for its International Studies Program. There are several; one in particular, overseen by , professor and chair of the , along with doctoral student , used Ghana as a principle case study for an examination of best practices for how energy infrastructure can reach rural Africa. The report is titled “.”

Hoffman learned recently from the Honorable Amin Adam, Ghana’s deputy minister of energy — who also was among the evaluators for the students’ presentations — that two of the students’ recommendations for energy use have been written into the country’s new draft national energy policy, soon to be finalized for the government to approve.

One recommendation is to expand Ghana’s National Electrification Scheme for rural electrification to include mini-grids or off-grid communities; the other is to develop regulations to promote and govern bio-energy industries.

“It would be hard for me to overstate how proud I was to get this,” Hoffman said.

Learn more about this Task Force, its 13 undergraduate members and their work on the Jackson School .

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UW affiliate Dr. Klaus Mergener named president of American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

Dr. Klaus Mergener, an affiliate professor with the UW Division of Gastroenterology in the School of Medicine, has been president of the , after serving a term as vice president. As president, among other duties he will lead the group’s COVID Response Management Team.

Mergener is also a partner at Washington Gastroenterology in Tacoma. His term as president will run until May 2021. The society, founded in 1941, has more than15,000 members worldwide.

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to��.��

Earth Day 50th Anniversary: Gaia Has a Fever

April 22, 2:00 PM���� Livestream

Join the Department of History, College of the Environment�����Ի� UW Earth Day in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.��Dr. Jennifer Thomson will give a talk��untangling the history of oil corporations, climate justice, and environmental��governance. Beginning with physicist James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, she’ll discuss the involvement of oil corporations in climate research, and explore a truly��liberatory environmental politics.

Free, please register for access������

COURSE:��Introduction to Basic Plant Morphology – Learning the Parts of the Plant

April 22 and April 23, 6:00 – 7:00 PM | Online Classroom

Celebrate Earth Day by expanding your plant vocabulary!��David Giblin, Collections Manager of the UW Herbarium,��teaches this two-part class. Learning the basic vegetative and reproductive parts of vascular plants that we know from our gardens, kitchens, and walks in nature, provides an opportunity to improve plant identification skills.

This class is offered online. Viewing instructions will be sent before the start of the class.

Cost is $20������Register & More Info

After the Blast The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens: Webinar with Dr. Eric Wagner

April 22, 10:00 – 11:30 AM | Zoom Webinar

In anticipation of the 40th Anniversary of the major Mount St. Helens eruption, UW Libraries and UW Press are proud to host a zoom webinar featuring Eric Wagner, Ph.D., author of After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens.

Since it’s eruption in 1980,��Mount St. Helens has been surprising ecologists and in After the Blast,��Wagner takes readers on a fascinating journey through the blast area and beyond. From fireweed to elk, the plants and animals forest scientists saw would not just change how ecologists approached the eruption and its landscape, but also prompt them to think in new ways about how life responds in the face of seemingly total devastation.

Free, please register for access������Register & More Info

Ask Your Farmer!

April 23, 11:00 AM |

The UW Farm is still producing food, but under restricted operations and without the usual dedicated crew of student volunteers. Farm manager Perry Acworth will host this Instagram Live session, showing the work that’s happening on the UW Farm and answering questions about the Farm and our food systems. If anyone has questions on how they can grow food for themselves, this is your moment!

Livestream takes place on and will begin at 11 AM.

������������More Info

Virtual Poetry Café for Poetry Month

Month of April | Online engagement

Since launching in April 1996,��National Poetry Month��has given people an annual occasion to celebrate the importance of poets and poetry in our culture. This April feels like an especially great time to explore the power of poetry and how it can be used to craft connection and celebrate the things that mean most to us!

Join Whole U this April for a virtual��UW Poetry Caf�to share the poems we love, write some of our own, and connect with our wider community over the written word.��To help get your creativity flowing, The Whole U devised UW-themed poetry prompts to try on your own or with colleagues and friends.

Pick the prompt that resonates most with you then share your favorite poems or original compositions with us by sending them to��wholeu@uw.edu��or by tagging them��#UWPoetryMonth��on social media.

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Crossing North Podcast

Ongoing | Online

Crossing North��is a podcast about Nordic and Baltic society and culture. Episodes feature interviews with authors, performers, and leaders from Scandinavia and the Baltic, as well as discussions with faculty in the Scandinavian Studies Department and Baltic Studies Program.

In the most recent episode, released April 15, Colin Gioia Connors interviews author Nora Ikstena and��assistant professor Liina-Ly Roos. Learn why Ikstena’s novel��Soviet Milk about Soviet-occupied Latvia was so popular that libraries had to create a special loan policy for the book.

Missing the Henry? View the online collection!

Ongoing ����

From photography to textiles, the Henry Art Gallery’s permanent collection contains more than 27,00 objects from around the world.�� The collection originated with the gift of nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings donated to the ������Ƶ by��Horace C. Henry��in 1926. It has grown over the years through acquisitions from exhibitions and through the generosity of art collectors, artists, and donors.

Luckily for those looking to reconnect with art while working remote, the Henry has an extensive��the online collection database. Learn more and .

Looking for more ways to engage? The Henry is also sharing content across their social media platforms daily!

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#BurkeFromHome Trivia Night

Every Friday, 8:00 PM������Virtual Event

Join the Burke Museum online on Fridays at 8 PM for #BurkeFromHome Trivia. The popular Burke Trivia Night is back—this time online to practice social distancing while having loads of fun! Get your nerd on with natural history and culture-themed trivia.

BYOB, snacks, and slippers! Check out for a preview!

Free, please register for access����

Staying home? Here’s what to watch

Ongoing | Your favorite streaming service

Looking for ways to stay entertained while staying at home?��If you’ve already binged all the shows in your Netflix queue, fear not. Faculty in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies��have gathered television and film recommendations to fit every mood.

Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for��more digital engagement opportunities.

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to��.��

Earth Day 50th Anniversary: Gaia Has a Fever

April 22, 2:00 PM���� Livestream

Join the Department of History, College of the Environment�����Ի� UW Earth Day in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.��Dr. Jennifer Thomson will give a talk��untangling the history of oil corporations, climate justice, and environmental��governance. Beginning with physicist James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, she’ll discuss the involvement of oil corporations in climate research, and explore a truly��liberatory environmental politics.

Free, please register for access������

Author Tim Egan presents 2020 Sustaining Our World lecture

April 13, 7:00 PM����

UW��School of Environmental and Forest Sciences��is proud to welcome��Timothy Egan, National Book Award winner and��New York Times��op-ed writer, as the 2020 Sustaining Our World lecture.��Egan will present, “Using the Power of Nature to Forge a New National Narrative.”

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Faculty Lecture with Whitney Lynn

April 14, 5:30 – 6:30 PM | Zoom Livestream

Interdisciplinary Visual Arts Assistant Professor Whitney Lynn gives a lecture titled “Ambiguous Figures.”

Whitney Lynn mines artifacts from art history and popular culture to reframe narratives of familiar objects, images, and events. Utilizing expanded forms of sculpture, photography, drawing and performance, her work amplifies and subverts embedded meanings, seeking to destabilize what is seemingly inherent.

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In Plain Sight Film Series: Sight Lines – Video Poetry Showcase

April 15, 7:30 – 9:30 PM | Livestream

Presented in partnership with��,��, and the UW Bothell��, The Henry Art Gallery and Northwest Film Forum co-present the����on the occasion of the Henry’s exhibition,��.
This series invites engagement with hidden histories and contexts unearthed with the aid of moving image media. Programs explore the myriad shades of nuance in disciplinary synthesis and delight in the discovery of new relationships between poetry, artifactology, and cinema.

Tickets are sliding scale: $0-$25, please register for access������

Professional Actor Training Program – Virtual Showcase Launch

April 15 | Goes live at��

Join the School of Drama and the Professional Actor Training Program Class��of 2020��in launching the first-ever Virtual Showcase!

The UW Professional Actor Training Program (PATP) has been a highly regarded three-year conservatory training program for more than forty years. The program leads to a Master of Fine Arts in acting. The program is devoted to preparing carefully-selected actors for the professional world of theatre, film, television, and new media.

Free, RSVP to receive��a reminder to check it out������

Gardening with the Seasons: Spring

April 16, 7:00 – 8:30 PM������Livestream Class

UW Botanic Gardens welcomes Christina Pfeiffer to share advice to kick start your seasonal garden care.

As spring approaches and things start moving fast in the garden, it can be hard to keep up or decide what to do first. With a focus on seasonal growth patterns, and best tools and techniques, this session will help home gardeners determine what tasks will have the most effect for the progress over the next months. Key topics will include planting, seasonal care for shrubs, vines, and perennial plants, lawn care, mulching and preparing for summer irrigation.

This class is offered online. Viewing instructions will be sent before the start of the class.

Tickets are $28��| Tickets & More Info

Childhood Bilingualism and Biliteracy:��What are the cognitive, linguistic, and education benefits?

April 16, 4:00 – 5:00 PM������Zoom Livestream

UW Friends of Chinese�����Ի� Department of Asian Language and Literature��demystify childhood bilingualism and biliteracy, especially when the two languages are as disparate as English and Chinese.

Even though over 150 different languages are spoken in the United States, learning two languages simultaneously is not always viewed positively or well supported in our school systems. Yet, other parts of the world embrace the opportunities of bilingualism and biliteracy. Are there cognitive, linguistic, and educational benefits of childhood bilingualism and biliteracy based on current research evidence? If so, what are they? How can parents foster such skills?

Free, please register for access��| Register & More Info

#BurkeFromHome Trivia Night

Every Friday, 8:00 PM������Virtual Event

Join the Burke Museum online on Fridays at 8 PM for #BurkeFromHome Trivia. The popular Burke Trivia Night is back—this time online to practice social distancing while having loads of fun! Get your nerd on with natural history and culture-themed trivia.

BYOB, snacks, and slippers! Check out for a preview!

Free, please register for access����

Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for��more digital engagement opportunities.

Olmstead in Seattle

November 12, 7 pm | Center for Urban Horticulture

Seattle has one of the most extensively developed Olmsted park systems in the United States, yet the story of how it came into existence has never been fully explored or described – until now, that is.

Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City, by Jennifer Ott, traces the story of how, in the midst of galloping growth at the turn of the twentieth century, Seattle’s city leaders seized on the confluence of a roaring economy with the City Beautiful movement to hire the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm. Their 1903 plan led to a supplemental plan, a playground plan, numerous park and boulevard designs, changes to park system management, and a ripple effect for the firm, as the Olmsted Brothers were subsequently hired to design public and private landscapes throughout the region.

Free with a suggested donation of $5��| More Info

Pilobolus: Come to Your Senses

November 14 – 16 | Meany Center

This “mind-blowing troupe of wildly creative and physically daring dancers” (NY Newsday) tests the limits of human physicality. Performing for 300,000+ people each year, Pilobolus has been honored with a TED Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, a Primetime Emmy Award and several Cannes Lion Awards. In their new show, Come to Your Senses, the company unravels the mystery of the origin of life, explores the beauty and strength of human connection, and celebrates our orientation in the biosphere.

Tickets are $61��|

$10 tickets for UW students when you show your Husky ID in advance at the��or on the night of the show at the Box Office at Meany Hall.

Funky Mogadishu: The Music of Somalia’s Disco Era

Tickets are $5 – $20������

MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora

The first day of spring, when daylight hours begin to exceed nighttime hours, seems especially significant this year — record warm temperatures in the Northwest are marking the change of seasons. But our blooms may be a couple weeks behind schedule after February’s snow and cold weather.

Ray Larson, curator at , explains that earlier cold temperatures may have delayed flowering plants, with bulbs and perennials being weeks behind their normal blooming time. But he says while warmth is a big factor in how plants grow, springtime’s increasing daylight plays an even bigger role.

After a few mild winters, he says this year’s cold snap may have tested the hardiness of some plants — but not to give up on them coming back yet. Don’t assume they are dead; give them until May or June before removing weather-beaten plants.

For more information:

Contact Kiyomi Taguchi, UW News video producer: ktaguchi@uw.edu or 206-685-2716.

The first day of spring, when daylight hours begin to exceed nighttime hours, seems especially significant this year��— record warm temperatures in the Northwest are marking the change of seasons. But our blooms may be a couple weeks behind schedule after February’s snow and cold weather.

Ray Larson, curator at��, explains that earlier cold temperatures may have delayed flowering plants, with bulbs and perennials being weeks behind their normal blooming time. But he says while warmth is a big factor in how plants grow, springtime’s increasing daylight plays an even bigger role.

After a few mild winters, he says this year’s cold snap may have tested the hardiness of some plants — but not to give up on them coming back yet. Don’t assume they are dead; give them until May or June before removing weather-beaten plants.

For more information:

Contact Kiyomi Taguchi, UW News video producer: ktaguchi@uw.edu or 206-685-2716.