October 3, 2025 • 42 mins
This month on Cultivating Curiosity, we explore how the University of North Florida is redefining what it means to be a campus. Horticulturist Rhonda Gracie shares how UNF became a botanical garden that inspires learning, supports research, and fosters community engagement. From award-winning gardens to volunteer-powered projects and even a “hort therapy” program tied to the largest collection of Crinum Lilies, this is a story of how nature can transform both people and place.
Resources
- UNF Botanical Garden Webpage: https://www.unf.edu/botanical-garden/index.html
- Upcoming Events: https://www.unf.edu/botanical-garden/Events.html
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, where we explore the
connections between people, plants, and the places that
shape our lives. Recently I've been reminded of
the David Attenborough quote that says if children don't grow
up knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not
understand it. And if they don't understand it,
they won't protect it. And if they don't protect it,
who will? So today, we're visiting the
(00:30):
University of North Florida, where the campus itself has been
transformed into a living, breathing Botanical Garden
that's been growing local impacts within the community.
Our guest today to talk about this is Rhonda Gracie.
She's a horticulturalist who helped lead the effort to bring
this vision to life. And together, we'll kind of
uncover the story, viewing US botanical gardening and how it
(00:51):
is impacting students, faculty, and the Jacksonville community
and exciting future ahead for this unique campus landscape.
So Rhonda, thank you so much forjoining us today.
I'm so excited to have you on here as our guest.
Thanks for having me, I'm super excited to talk about my
favorite topic. Plants.
So I love UNF. You know, I'm from the
(01:12):
Jacksonville area. UNF has been, you know, part of
the community for years. And recently you all have this
really cool event called Earth Shapes.
And I kind of want to just dive in because Earth Shapes this
kind of like bridged you all outto the community even more as
part of your mission, which we'll talk about.
But tell us a little bit about ayourself, but also what was the
(01:34):
Earth Shapes program and event that happened recently at the
garden? I'm sure so myself.
We'll start with that. I'm a former landscape architect
for the cities of Clearwater andMiami Beach, where I worked in
Parks and Recreation and designing public spaces.
And then I came to UNF in 2013 with the goal of transforming
(01:56):
the campus into a Botanical Garden so that we could reach
the public here. And Earth Shapes was our very
first big event that we've held.So it's becoming a Botanical
Garden. It was super exciting and super.
We took bamboo that was cultivated from our garden and
(02:18):
we built sculptures. I built a lot of them myself.
Had never worked with bamboo before.
That was really cool. They turned out beautiful by the
way. And we built these beautiful
sculptures with a couple other artists.
We can talk about them later andnot just and we put them on
display to show sustainable art.A lot of botanical gardens
(02:42):
always have like these art showslike Chihuly glass and, and
things like that, right? And we don't have that kind of
budget. So, you know, it's like, all
right, let's do some sustainableart.
We tried to get some other artists involved.
They're like, well, I've never worked with bamboo before.
So we decided, well, we'll just build them ourselves and show
you it can be done. And the goal is to bring this to
(03:06):
the rest of the community as a traveling show on an annual
basis. Cool.
Yeah. So we'll be displaying them at
the Kummer Museum again. I think we're, you know, the
community really embraced this. We're hoping to also bring on
board the Jacksonville Zoo, maybe the Emerald Trail, and
(03:26):
have it go from each venue. And the sculptures look
different in each setting. So it's a narrative sculptures
that will look like animals thattold the story.
And then we also did some abstract, more ikebana inspired
Japanese floral art arrangements.
And then in conjunction with thesculptures, we were able to get
(03:48):
people into our gardens, experience our gardens, guided
tours. We had a tremendous amount of
guest speakers and that was fantastic talking about birds
and insects. And we did a butterfly release
and we released over 60 butterflies in our butterfly
garden and the the public reallyembraced it.
(04:10):
Lots of activities for kids. Everybody from 2 to 90 enjoyed
it. And I really like because the,
the event was set up in a way tobring in this intersection of
art, the environment, the Botanical Garden, in a way that
the community community can engage it in a positive way.
It's like you you're bringing inthe kids, especially because you
(04:32):
think of, you know, it's a campus.
So you're thinking of college age students, but this isn't
just a college a students event.This is the community, including
youth and kids. But now going that next step is
how can this roll out further toother local partners?
And it's great. Like you have the cover museum,
Jacksonville Zoo and maybe thinkabout how you work with the city
with the Emerald Trail. Those are all like great next
(04:54):
steps. What was, you know, if you think
about like with that program, you know, again, it goes back
that David Attenborough quote, you know, what was like if you
had to choose like, what's the big purpose of the impact of
that event that the Botanical Garden help support and provide?
You know what? What was its intent, its
objective that you wanted to do?Getting people in nature,
getting them to understand the value of nature.
(05:17):
They've done plenty of studies that show 120 minutes of nature
per week is like the magic number to reduce stress and
anxiety, help with mental clarity, etcetera.
And I can't get somebody to champion nature if they're not
in it. And so how do we do that?
Going back to that quote, you know, what can we do to get them
(05:41):
in nature? And we strategically place some
of the sculpture. So people had to like, cross the
grass. And some people are intimidated
by it. They've never stepped in the
grass before, no. No, I mean, when I was a kid we
ran across the grass to go, you know, trick or treating and
stuff. We didn't care.
Nowadays, though, you're not notallowed to do that.
You know, you're afraid your neighbor's going to turn on the
(06:02):
sprinklers on you or something like that.
So it was really it was really cool to see the reaction though,
on the public to I can do that. And then and and the kids and we
even did mini bouquet. So we actually gave the public
snips to go cut flowers from thegarden.
(06:23):
They're like the the response was crazy.
They're. What a flabbergasted.
Yeah, oh, big time. They're like.
Do what you're. You're trust in trusting me to
cut your plants? Yeah.
Just don't take more than 10%. You know, we, we showed them
like techniques and things like that, but they've got to take
away a piece of our garden. And that was really cool.
(06:45):
That's a really cool way becauseI, I got to work in a botanical
gardens in the past, like duringmy undergrad, I worked at
Botanical Garden Arboretum and my favorite thing was the
engagement. Like how do we actually work
with? Like how does a Botanical Garden
work with the community, have events that teach education, new
experiences? And I think this kind of really
(07:05):
goes into the value what a Botanical Garden can be.
Is it go beyond just, you know, a collection of plants, But
there's intent and there's purpose behind it.
And I think that's one of the really cool things about UNF as
a Botanical Garden because it's not just like one part of the
campus is a Botanical Garden. The campus is a Botanical Garden
(07:28):
And I think that takes it to a alittle bit deeper layer than
traditional Botanical Garden. So can you go over a little bit
about like what the mission of UNS Botanical Garden is and how
it's kind of leading to these different impacts and the value
that it has with the students oncampus and beyond?
Yeah. So without quoting the mission,
(07:48):
it's essentially connecting people with nature.
And with that people will becomebetter stewards, support
sustainability. Education becomes a part of it,
research becomes a part of it, and we take better care of our
planet and ourselves and we learn how to to work in harmony
(08:09):
with nature. And our gardens reflect the
different learning that goes on from each of our campus
colleges, so different departments.
So we're trying to show people that nature effects everybody in
every aspect and walk of life, whether it's from the School of
Business, Engineering, Health and education, etcetera.
(08:33):
All of the gardens have a way ofconnecting to those learning
objectives and getting people torealize that nature's our
lifeblood for humans. I would rather take a different
approach and teach you how you can be a better steward and take
action that is not a burden thatmakes change.
(08:58):
You talking about this, it reminds me of conversation we've
had one time where it's not necessarily doing one thing
perfectly. Maybe it's more of something,
the things that we can do imperfectly that can lead up to
these bigger impacts. And even in the how we're
showcasing that and experiencingthat can exist in so many
different ways. And you're talking about how the
(09:18):
garden is actually an extension as well to what's happening on
campus and teaching and learningand how we're experiencing these
benefits from the garden. And the story that you're
telling me one time is how you had some students that were in
the classroom, they're learning about how to take blood pressure
and their blood pressure was really high in the classroom.
They all had like white coat syndrome, even though they're
all learning, but then they cameout into the garden and then
(09:41):
they did the same thing again, but their blood pressure was
lower. That showed this like immediate
physiological response to the students engaging in that garden
that they can see as part of that educational experience.
So this is like one example, of course, you know, but where else
are you seeing within the Botanical Garden and how
(10:03):
students are engaging the garden?
They're engaging in a lot of different ways, both from a
physiological aspect, like with the nursing students, which they
do that all the time now, which is really cool.
But they also come out and they do our edimental tours and learn
about edible ornamental plants. So they realize that their
(10:25):
garden that surrounds them doesn't have have to be the
traditional agricultural or raised garden box that their
food and other things are part of their actual ornamental
garden. They can use it like ACA
Siluana, for example, Pineapple guava, one of my faves.
The flowers taste like pineapple, the petal, right?
(10:48):
Yummy. Put it in a salad.
Today I actually did a workshop with, again, kind of along the
lines of edimentals and ethnobotany, and we talked about
beauty Berry and I had beauty Berry Jelly samples, I had
elderberry Jelly samples. We did teas and tinctures.
(11:09):
And we talked about how the beauty Berry not only makes this
really great jam and Jelly, how it's antioxidant so it helps to
get rid of heavy metals from ourbodies and all those vitamin
nutrient elements. But then it was really fun to
also teach them how our indigenous societies use the
leaves to repel insects, biting insects.
(11:33):
And you tear up the leaves and it releases the oils and it
helps you with mosquito bites. And then we showed them how to
make their own bug spray. So the original deep that's.
Really cool. So I think it's really neat
because what you're doing is, you know, there's this
understanding, it's like there'sthis disconnect that exists
within, you know, how we perceive the world or how a lot
(11:54):
of people perceive the world. And like in nature, it's like
people in nature don't coexist really anymore.
And that's actually a really cool story.
We talked about ethnobotany. You know, it's like how do
traditional different cultural groups use plants?
And I think when you're kind of showcasing that to the students,
(12:15):
that's a really cool way to unveil or pull back a layer of
their existence and how they actually have this really deep
rooted connection to nature thatmaybe they have never seen or
experienced before. And that's incredibly valuable.
And again, that's an experience that you can only have, you
know, in certain curated events or places like a Botanical
(12:37):
Garden. So these are these different
ways that we're in. You're engaging the students,
but there's different ways that we can, the Botanical Garden can
probably engage the community. Because I know you've looked at
doing some research or other projects.
Can you give any examples of some, like research that you've
been trying to do or wanting to do or test that you're doing at
(12:58):
the Botanical Garden? So one of the big ones that
we're working on right now is floating wetland islands.
So floating wetland islands are curated to mimic basically the
Everglades islands. And you place an island, an
artificial island in a, in a pond, a water body and you would
(13:20):
add plants to it. In my case, I use beddover
grass. You can use native plants and
then the roots will reach into the water and act as an estuary
for fish under underneath. But the big thing is that the
roots are pulling up from the plant, all the heavy metals, all
of the extra nutrient loads fromgrass clippings, etcetera dying
(13:42):
off and they're releasing nitrogen, which would in turn
typically cause an algae bloom. But if you have a big enough
island, 5% to water body coverage, those roots will pull
out all of those nutrient loads,take them up and keep your water
clean and clear while also providing habitat for wildlife
(14:02):
up on top. And I gave a garden tour about 3
years ago, 2 1/2 three years agoto a group of about 35 talked
about the benefits of the floating island, how we want to
do a pilot project because we already know from studies
there's already proof of concept.
So we wanted to do it on a much bigger scale.
And in the meantime time we havethis one smaller floating island
(14:25):
that acts as basically proof of concept.
Well, the woman from one of the women from the tour group really
latched on to this discussion that was only 5 or 10 minutes
out of an hour and a half tour and went back to her community.
Over a couple of years of back and forth, them not wanting to
do it, she finally gifted it to their community and said, OK, my
(14:49):
dying wish is I'm gifting you my, you know, my estate and I
want you to install these gardens so when I'm dead and
gone, if they don't work and getrid of them.
But I want these floating, thesefloating gardens, these floating
wetland islands. No way for like for her
community that was part of her. I don't, I don't want to say
(15:09):
dying wish, but it's like part of her estate.
Yeah, it is it in in essence to say was her dying wish and so
the they didn't have a choice but to say yes.
So yeah. Yeah.
But what's cool about it though is that the community at first
didn't you know, or at least themanagers operations really
(15:32):
didn't want to embrace it. They really felt like it was
going to be a lot of extra work for them and they weren't sold.
And then once they started doingthe research, they are 100% on
board. They did not value engineer out
a single element and they just got installed.
Let's than a month ago. Really.
And how long ago was this initial tour that you've had?
(15:54):
2 1/2 years ago. Wow.
So now I'm going to meet with them in a couple weeks and we're
now gonna see how we can get ourstudents to test and do the
study at their facility since they already invested the big
dollars. Yeah, you can use, you do like
something like lake watch, like late watch program protocol to
(16:16):
test the water. Oh, that's fantastic.
See, these are the things that Ilove to hear because in
extension we use, we use this term called ripple effect
mapping. And this is, I think a great
example is you created an experience as educational
experience in this one person, you know, like, like we can do
this, you know, and they were persistent, sound like they were
(16:40):
very persistent. And it led to this now this
community adopting this big change too, because it's not an
easy change to kind of say we'regoing to do floating wetlands,
but for the fact that then they're like, Oh no, they bought
into it. The community did, and they
didn't value engineer anything out of it.
(17:01):
I think that's a testament to kind of say this is an impact
from the Botanical Garden. Absolutely.
And what's even better is that this particular community has
other like communities elsewhere.
So now they're looking to add them to their as part of their
lake management program across the board.
Wow. Yeah.
So that one experience, it was the drop in the water and it
(17:24):
rippled out to this community where this this individual that
was at the tour rippled out to her community and it had an
impact now on this management company or the people that are
overseeing this management. And it's going to ripple out
further until other communities.That's a huge impact.
That's a massive impact. Good for you and your team.
(17:44):
Yeah, it's really cool and I'm super excited.
They're already seeing the effects of the water quality in
just a short period of time, andeverything hasn't grown in yet.
We even gave a lecture at FNG DLA on this.
So I'm hoping we'll do more of that so that we can maybe others
that heard that lecture hear about this story and that that
(18:07):
it also creates an additional ripple and inspire somebody else
as well. And it's not very often we get
to find out about how we've impacted somebody or community.
So yeah, super, super exciting stuff.
Well, follow up question just because it was relevant to our
conversation. When you first implemented the
(18:28):
floating wetland, could you havedone it better?
Was it perfect when you first? Implemented not it was too
small, it doesn't even cover the5% of the water body.
But I needed something to talk about since I believe in it.
See, and that's the thing, it's like it doesn't doesn't have to
be perfect. It's like the doing something,
even if it's imperfect can lead to bigger impact.
(18:51):
So I think this is a great example of that well.
Sometimes it's better than perfect, right?
Exactly. Exactly.
Because then you never get it done.
You'll still be talking about it.
Yeah. And then hopefully this will in
turn allow us to actually do thethe study on campus as well.
(19:12):
But if not, we're going to be talking with the community and
potentially A donor to help fundthe student study.
Oh cool, does it actually get some like empirical research and
all that? Stuff bringing it back to us,
How cool is that? Oh, that is great.
Well, I want to go further because I mean, this is a great
success. This isn't the only success that
(19:33):
you all have had at the Botanical Garden.
From what I understand, you all have recently been given an
award. Can you tell us a little bit
about? That Yeah.
So we were just notified that wereceived the Florida Native
Plant Society's Award of Excellence for our category for
our Bioswell. Our Bioswell garden is one of my
(19:53):
faves. I mean, it's like saying, you
know, like we talked about before with like kids, you know,
we don't really have a favorite,but you know, sometimes ones
like just a little bit more in the forefront at the moment.
They're, they're a little more active.
I don't know, but yeah. So we're super stoked about it.
(20:14):
The award from them required us to have the garden at least a
couple years old. So it's not like a typical
garden awards where somebody's like just installed something,
they send pictures in and then they get this award.
And then if you were to go back to the gardens that won the
awards 2 years later, they don'tnecessarily look good.
(20:36):
Well, a garden you should look, it's worse when it's first
planted, not its best for starters, or you didn't do
things right. So what I love about this award
and what makes it extra special is the fact that you have to
show the pictures of before you have to show when it was planted
and then you got to show it now after a few years to show that
(20:57):
it's grown in, it's maintainableand then it requires a certain
level of a number of natives. In addition to us receiving that
award, it was also received the Florida Friendly Landscapings
newer natural designation. So we're the second natural
(21:18):
designation in Duval County withthat garden and then two others
that subsequently followed it. Well, congratulations.
I mean, that's, that's great. That's great recognition, you
know, but the, the success that you've had with all this, it's
not just, you know, it's not just you and your team that's
there on campus. Through your efforts, you've
(21:39):
actually worked with like I knowyou have master Gardener
volunteers come out there, you have student volunteer groups.
What are some of those differentways you've been engaging the
community as part of helping maintain the botanical?
Not just maintaining the Botanical Garden, but providing
that educational programming with the Botanic Garden.
Yeah, that's really cool. So our Master Gardeners do play
(22:02):
a huge role. They played a huge role in
helping us to become a BotanicalGarden to provide that extra
layer to get us over the hurdle.And they also help us with
programming. So does our staff.
Don't no knock on our staff. Our staff worker their their
tails off and they do a wonderful job.
(22:24):
But they do help us with programming.
They do come out and provide educational events.
We had last year we were recognized in Roots Magazine,
thought to be confused with Duval County's UFI Fits
extension Roots Magazine. Oh, that's true, yeah.
It's a it's a global magazine and our volunteer program was
(22:49):
one of nine selected internationally to be featured
for the impact that our volunteers had on our garden,
and that was really cool. We recorded over 9600 volunteer
hours in 2024 which is massive. How many hours?
Over 9600. Was it 9600?
And yeah. That's 4.5.
(23:12):
That's like a. Quarter of $1,000,000 worth of
volunteer service. Yeah, this is about.
This is just huge. Yeah.
And, and and also the equivalentof 4.57 in change, something
like that. Full time employees.
Wow. Yeah.
And they and they and our volunteers are across the board.
It's students, it's faculty, it's our Master Gardeners, our
(23:36):
tree stewards, garden enthusiast, bright future teens
that come out. We get corporate corporations
that come out and do volunteer days.
You know, we work with Alden Rd.Exceptional Learning Center.
So those are kids with intellectual developmental
differences. We work with, we are OTC kids
(24:00):
and you know, so we've got all kinds of people making all kinds
of differences in different areas, whether it's in the
garden itself, providing education, weed, invasive weed
management control. We've got a new program we're
working on for that that's really exciting and that's going
(24:21):
to be involving our students again.
So UNF has guaranteed all of itsstudents to have an experiential
opportunity similar to like an internship on the job training.
So we've had an issue with some of our invasive weeds and trying
to manage them. And I, we have a wetland club
(24:44):
and we have some other students interested in environmentalism.
We have a new degree in that. And I thought of an idea and I
got it approved is why don't we have these students get trained
by at IFIS extension, go throughthe educational process, take
the exam to get their pest control licenses to treat see
(25:07):
invasive weeds like coral Aldesia.
So of course we want to manuallycontrol as much as possible, but
coral Aldesia has a 98% germination rate, so every
Berry. Billions of berries, yeah.
Every Berry is a plant, right? And each plant can produce
several 100 berries per year, sothe population can get really
(25:29):
out of control. And then if you break off a
single root, it'll still re rootitself.
It's just a nightmare to to man manage.
So we have it in one area and we're trying to control it.
There's several acres that are infested and we've gotten about
1/2 an acre with a year and a half's worth of manual work
trying to get rid of it. So we feel like we've made
(25:51):
progress, but manually it's going to take us forever.
So if we can have these studentstrained to be able to treat this
with the proper herbicides, withthe proper PPE, so our personal
protection equipment, with a license that they can take with
them, especially the students that are looking at going into
(26:12):
jobs and environmentalism, they're going to be required of
this, you know? Oh, yeah.
And they're already have that. I mean that's that's more
marketable for them to have thatcertification and license, you
know, assuming they're going to be working in Florida, but
sometimes they have reciprocity with other states with those
license. So I mean, that's of huge value,
(26:32):
especially for employers. Yeah.
So what we're thinking about or what we are going to do is we're
going to give them the the education, let them take the
exam. We'll provide them the PPE, we
will provide them on the job trainers to go out and work with
them, right. So we make sure everything's
(26:54):
mixed correctly plant ID. We are also going to track GPS
mark and label where everything's at.
Put that into our tree plotter system that also tracks all of
our other plants. We can also designate any other
invasive exotics like camphor trees or right that we need to
treat and then they get on the job training they get to take
(27:17):
this license with them I'll evenpay for their CEU classes, you
know in education while they're here and working for us.
So in exchange, they they get a great benefit, we get a great
benefit. And it also shows that while
we're trying to use the best management practices and avoid
(27:39):
herbicides wherever possible, there is a point in time where
you're going to have to pull outsomething from the toolbox.
Yeah, yeah, especially, you know, it's like we we promote
integrated pest management with everything we do.
But if you know, like the cultural, mechanical or
biological controls aren't cutting it, sometimes you have
to go straight to that chemical application.
(28:00):
But and I think this goes, you know, providing this opportunity
goes just reiterates, it doesn'tgo back, but it reiterates the
value of the campus being a Botanical Garden because then
you're providing applicable experiential learning
opportunities to the students oncampus.
That then provides them additional like in this specific
(28:22):
example, their license, their card holders, and that makes
makes them more hireable to employers when they start
looking for jobs. So I think that's, that's
fantastic. You know, and with everything
we've talked about so far with the Botanical Garden, you know,
a lot has been really thinking about that perspective of how
we're looking at that value of the Botanical Garden on campus.
(28:45):
But botanical gardens have broader reaches.
And you talked a little bit about the communities and then
how you want to roll out earth shapes in a broader perspective
in the future. But can you briefly talk about
how has the community outside ofcampus in Jacksonville, the
school's organizations, how theyreally been engaging with the
(29:08):
Botanical Garden? So the last few years I've been
kind of on the download. We provided over 100 and 5 to
120 different educational events, garden garden tours,
base of weed roundups, helping with the pitcher plant
restoration in our blog. So we have an area where we used
(29:33):
to do controlled burns. We aren't able to do this one
area. So the area got a little bit
overgrown and it was starting tochoke out the pitcher plant.
So we've been going in and restoring this location with the
naturally occurred hooded pitcher plant.
So the community's look at taking part in that alongside
our students and restoring that area.
So we're providing a lot of those opportunities year round.
(29:57):
We're going back. To that quote that we mentioned
with David Attenborough at the very beginning, you know, if
children don't grow up knowing about nature and appreciating
it, they will not understand it.And if they don't understand it,
they won't protect it. And if they don't protect it,
who will? So you're reconnecting a lot of
people back to this natural areathrough educational program, the
(30:20):
experiences that they have of just being there or just like in
earth shapes, just having peoplejust walk in the grass, you
know, just something like that. But again, going back to that
quote, one of the term, that oneterm that we've used before is
the term nature deficit disorder.
And that's commonly used to describe how disconnected people
(30:42):
have become from the natural world.
And we kind of alluded to that. We're talking about ethnobotany
is like, wow, people are seeing how we actually engage with
nature. Do you feel that like this
Botanic Garden in the middle of Jacksonville and the things that
you're doing is like really working towards addressing
nature deficit disorder? Absolutely, because we, the
(31:04):
Botanical Garden isn't just our built gardens, it's also our
natural lands. You know, the Sawmill Slough,
which is actually a federal wildlife preserves.
But we're trying to get you intothose natural spaces.
At the same time, I want you to also understand that our built
gardens have to replace and act as part of our natural lands
(31:25):
that are being degradated. In other words, those are just
as significant because sometimespeople when you talk about
forest bathing or nature deficitor disorder, they think of the
lack of it's got to be a naturalland only, right, Right.
And destroy pristine lands, parks, you know, park lands like
the national parks, though not abuilt park like soccer parks or
(31:49):
fields and such. But those built gardens now
though, is we're trying to show the interconnection between them
and how they are also wildlife corridors, how what we're doing
with how we maintain them. So when people come on our
garden tours, we talked to them a little bit about how we
maintain our gardens and how 14 of them are certified Florida
(32:10):
friendly landscaping. And that gives us a little bit
more latitude 1 to do things right, but to show that every
garden doesn't have to be super pristine and that you can leave
the leaves. You can cut up tree branches and
let it degrade in the soil or allow a bird to use it for nest
building. And we're trying to create that
(32:31):
connection between the two spaces, which kind of goes into
the Ptolemy's thing, but bringing nature home as well.
But we're trying to like make sure that you understand that
both are important and you need to protect both and that you can
do a better job on your plant selections through Florida
friendly landscaping. And if we do those things well
(32:55):
and we teach you how to do those, so when you come on
campus and you see our gardening, you can go, oh, I
could do that at home. Oh, I didn't know that.
You know, Rosemary could be a wonderful ground cover in my
yard. It doesn't have to be in that
raised planner box. You know, if I can get you to
(33:16):
incorporate some of those littlethings and then you start
getting into nature and you start understanding that, you
start interacting with it, then that helps tremendously.
As we come to our end of time, II want to ask you, you know
what's next? What when we're thinking about
UNS Botanic Garden, what's that big next step that you all have
(33:40):
that you want to do? I know earth shapes, you want to
kind of go as like a traveling thing around the city and the
county, but what's your big challenges and big goals that
you have coming up? So we want to continue to expand
our volunteer program. We want to incorporate more of
our students, getting more of our faculty involved, doing more
(34:00):
experiential learning opportunities like some of the
ones we mentioned. And and expanding upon that,
we'd like to do more events on campus.
And we are in the process of acquiring the world's largest
crying Lily collection. Nestor White lives in
Middleburg. He's got a bigger collection
than Jinx. And he was going to give it to
(34:21):
Jinx. Yeah.
And instead he's gifting it to us because he even talked to
Disney and several others. So it is the world's largest
over 450 different cultivars. But because crying OPS are so
cool for how you can propagate them, because the stolens are
they're so big, it's really easyto crossbreed them, right?
Yeah. So I had this idea when I was
(34:42):
talking to Nestor, and he was talking about how easy it is.
And that's how he ended up with all these different cultivars.
And I've got all his records for40 years on top of it.
Way. Yeah, so.
Like I've seen photos of his collection of the collection so.
It's incredible. Yeah, but he was telling me
about how when you crossbreed and you end up with the seeds
(35:04):
and you don't know for three to four years before that plant
blooms what your new hybrid is. My brain goes Ding, Ding, Ding.
Students graduate in three to four years.
How cool would it be to do a hort therapy program where we
bring in our students, teach them all about the crynums, have
(35:24):
them create their own plant, right.
Do the big. Time.
Measure up, yes. And then when it blooms, they
bloom. But it's not.
It's not the coolest thing. Oh, that's so neat.
And I want to do that program not only.
So it's kind of twofold, it's a longitudinal study that I'm
looking at doing. Yeah.
So what I thought we could do iswe would take the the top
(35:48):
incoming class, middle and bottom right, a handful of kids
from each equal amounts. And in the first semester they
would come in and they would work with a certified hort
therapist, right? I have a friend of mine run the
program and very, very intentional.
And then we would do a survey onhow are you feeling today when
(36:09):
they come in and then how you feeling when you leave.
In the meantime, the students are researching or crying on
learning all about it, doing allthe measurements, etcetera.
The following year, I want the students that attended the first
year to act as the mentors for the next group.
And we have another group opinion, OK.
As their plants continue to growthird year, I want them to run
(36:32):
the program with the hort therapist just monitoring,
supervising second year acts as the mentors, right right.
Fourth year they do their capstone project on it and they
it's. Almost.
You're almost creating like it'sown, like it's a four year
process where you kind of you'rekind of getting the system
moving and once it's moving it kind of you just nurture it and
(36:55):
it kind of moves itself to a certain extent.
Yeah. And then on top of that, so each
year all the students are takingthat survey when they come into
class. Just super quick answer the
question, how you feel today? You know, are you happy, sad,
angry, whatever, like little like emoji face or something
like that and then how you feel when you leave.
So that's the longitudinal part.So then you can see how this is
(37:18):
making a positive impact. Then the second aspect of it
would be does the students in the upper level, middle and
bottom tier for, you know, incoming freshmen when they
start out because they had higher test scores, maybe better
grades, etcetera. Do they all plateau out and kind
of become at the same level, or do that curve stay the same?
(37:39):
Oh, like I'd, I'd imagine like your first couple years that it
occurs going to be the same. But I'd imagine once you have
like that, like I'd imagine eventually you'll pull people up
higher. That's what we.
Have those other levels of engagement, Yeah.
Because I mean, if you think about it, hort therapy, I know
(38:00):
that. I know you're friends with.
Confidence. Yeah, they're getting
confidence. I mean, I know you're friends
with Lee Deals. She probably has a bunch of like
really cool surveys just on this.
But like what you're doing is you're also one of your
constructs that you should probably include, not just, you
know, how well are you feeling? Because I think there's a
connection is that that community, you're building a
(38:21):
community around that and how much of an influence does that
have? So you're building a community
around work therapy. That's two different variables
that you can kind of look at andsee how.
That. Because I imagine it's like
they're both going to have a factor, you know?
Can you isolate one from the other?
I guess you could because, you know, you can maybe compare it
(38:43):
to other student groups where maybe there's community, but the
horticulture is not part of it, right?
Like can you evaluate a club over 4 years?
Oh, I like that angle. And then compare that to like
the hort therapy group. So you have community.
So then you can kind of parse those variables out also.
(39:04):
And then I mean, there's always an option is who else is doing
this? Don't have that community
aspect, just the hort therapy only.
That'd be really cool. Yeah.
So all of that came about in my head when Nestor told me that it
takes three to four years for the new plant to bloom.
I just, I think it's kind of a cool way to engage the world's
(39:27):
largest collection. Like, how do we take it to that
next level? How do we bring it back home
where it's significant to somebody else that's not a plant
winner? Rhonda, it's been such a
pleasure having you with us today, the leadership that you
provided to you. And F Botanic Garden, I know it
didn't start with you there, butyou took what was existing on
(39:49):
UNS campus and you really grew it and you really pushed it to
new possibilities and new ideas to have bigger, broader impacts
within the Jacksonville community.
And I think that's such a valuable thing that you and your
team has have provided. And I think it's a great model
to kind of really push to what Botanic Gardens can do and
(40:11):
become. So I really want to thank you
for taking your time, spending it, your afternoon with me as we
kind of talk about the successesof UNF and a Botanic Garden.
And I encourage anyone. If you're in Jacksonville, stop
by the gardens and you can reachout to Rhonda and we'll make
sure that we feel provide those that contact information to get
a hold of you for like tour information and stuff like that.
(40:35):
So, Rhonda, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you. Appreciate you having me.
Absolutely one inspiring story from vision to reality, UNF
Botanical Garden is proving thatcampuses can be more than
classrooms. They can be living laboratories
that nurture both people and theplanet.
(40:56):
A big thank you to Rhonda Graciefor sharing the story and to
you, our listeners, for joining us.
If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe,
share, and leave us a review. Until next time, keep
cultivating curiosity and exploring the connections
between nature and community.
Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, where we explore the
connections between people, plants, and the places that
shape our lives. Recently I've been reminded of
the David Attenborough quote that says if children don't grow
up knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not
understand it. And if they don't understand it,
they won't protect it. And if they don't protect it,
who will? So today, we're visiting the
(00:30):
University of North Florida, where the campus itself has been
transformed into a living, breathing Botanical Garden
that's been growing local impacts within the community.
Our guest today to talk about this is Rhonda Gracie.
She's a horticulturalist who helped lead the effort to bring
this vision to life. And together, we'll kind of
uncover the story, viewing US botanical gardening and how it
(00:51):
is impacting students, faculty, and the Jacksonville community
and exciting future ahead for this unique campus landscape.
So Rhonda, thank you so much forjoining us today.
I'm so excited to have you on here as our guest.
Thanks for having me, I'm super excited to talk about my
favorite topic. Plants.
So I love UNF. You know, I'm from the
(01:12):
Jacksonville area. UNF has been, you know, part of
the community for years. And recently you all have this
really cool event called Earth Shapes.
And I kind of want to just dive in because Earth Shapes this
kind of like bridged you all outto the community even more as
part of your mission, which we'll talk about.
But tell us a little bit about ayourself, but also what was the
(01:34):
Earth Shapes program and event that happened recently at the
garden? I'm sure so myself.
We'll start with that. I'm a former landscape architect
for the cities of Clearwater andMiami Beach, where I worked in
Parks and Recreation and designing public spaces.
And then I came to UNF in 2013 with the goal of transforming
(01:56):
the campus into a Botanical Garden so that we could reach
the public here. And Earth Shapes was our very
first big event that we've held.So it's becoming a Botanical
Garden. It was super exciting and super.
We took bamboo that was cultivated from our garden and
(02:18):
we built sculptures. I built a lot of them myself.
Had never worked with bamboo before.
That was really cool. They turned out beautiful by the
way. And we built these beautiful
sculptures with a couple other artists.
We can talk about them later andnot just and we put them on
display to show sustainable art.A lot of botanical gardens
(02:42):
always have like these art showslike Chihuly glass and, and
things like that, right? And we don't have that kind of
budget. So, you know, it's like, all
right, let's do some sustainableart.
We tried to get some other artists involved.
They're like, well, I've never worked with bamboo before.
So we decided, well, we'll just build them ourselves and show
you it can be done. And the goal is to bring this to
(03:06):
the rest of the community as a traveling show on an annual
basis. Cool.
Yeah. So we'll be displaying them at
the Kummer Museum again. I think we're, you know, the
community really embraced this. We're hoping to also bring on
board the Jacksonville Zoo, maybe the Emerald Trail, and
(03:26):
have it go from each venue. And the sculptures look
different in each setting. So it's a narrative sculptures
that will look like animals thattold the story.
And then we also did some abstract, more ikebana inspired
Japanese floral art arrangements.
And then in conjunction with thesculptures, we were able to get
(03:48):
people into our gardens, experience our gardens, guided
tours. We had a tremendous amount of
guest speakers and that was fantastic talking about birds
and insects. And we did a butterfly release
and we released over 60 butterflies in our butterfly
garden and the the public reallyembraced it.
(04:10):
Lots of activities for kids. Everybody from 2 to 90 enjoyed
it. And I really like because the,
the event was set up in a way tobring in this intersection of
art, the environment, the Botanical Garden, in a way that
the community community can engage it in a positive way.
It's like you you're bringing inthe kids, especially because you
(04:32):
think of, you know, it's a campus.
So you're thinking of college age students, but this isn't
just a college a students event.This is the community, including
youth and kids. But now going that next step is
how can this roll out further toother local partners?
And it's great. Like you have the cover museum,
Jacksonville Zoo and maybe thinkabout how you work with the city
with the Emerald Trail. Those are all like great next
(04:54):
steps. What was, you know, if you think
about like with that program, you know, again, it goes back
that David Attenborough quote, you know, what was like if you
had to choose like, what's the big purpose of the impact of
that event that the Botanical Garden help support and provide?
You know what? What was its intent, its
objective that you wanted to do?Getting people in nature,
getting them to understand the value of nature.
(05:17):
They've done plenty of studies that show 120 minutes of nature
per week is like the magic number to reduce stress and
anxiety, help with mental clarity, etcetera.
And I can't get somebody to champion nature if they're not
in it. And so how do we do that?
Going back to that quote, you know, what can we do to get them
(05:41):
in nature? And we strategically place some
of the sculpture. So people had to like, cross the
grass. And some people are intimidated
by it. They've never stepped in the
grass before, no. No, I mean, when I was a kid we
ran across the grass to go, you know, trick or treating and
stuff. We didn't care.
Nowadays, though, you're not notallowed to do that.
You know, you're afraid your neighbor's going to turn on the
(06:02):
sprinklers on you or something like that.
So it was really it was really cool to see the reaction though,
on the public to I can do that. And then and and the kids and we
even did mini bouquet. So we actually gave the public
snips to go cut flowers from thegarden.
(06:23):
They're like the the response was crazy.
They're. What a flabbergasted.
Yeah, oh, big time. They're like.
Do what you're. You're trust in trusting me to
cut your plants? Yeah.
Just don't take more than 10%. You know, we, we showed them
like techniques and things like that, but they've got to take
away a piece of our garden. And that was really cool.
(06:45):
That's a really cool way becauseI, I got to work in a botanical
gardens in the past, like duringmy undergrad, I worked at
Botanical Garden Arboretum and my favorite thing was the
engagement. Like how do we actually work
with? Like how does a Botanical Garden
work with the community, have events that teach education, new
experiences? And I think this kind of really
(07:05):
goes into the value what a Botanical Garden can be.
Is it go beyond just, you know, a collection of plants, But
there's intent and there's purpose behind it.
And I think that's one of the really cool things about UNF as
a Botanical Garden because it's not just like one part of the
campus is a Botanical Garden. The campus is a Botanical Garden
(07:28):
And I think that takes it to a alittle bit deeper layer than
traditional Botanical Garden. So can you go over a little bit
about like what the mission of UNS Botanical Garden is and how
it's kind of leading to these different impacts and the value
that it has with the students oncampus and beyond?
Yeah. So without quoting the mission,
(07:48):
it's essentially connecting people with nature.
And with that people will becomebetter stewards, support
sustainability. Education becomes a part of it,
research becomes a part of it, and we take better care of our
planet and ourselves and we learn how to to work in harmony
(08:09):
with nature. And our gardens reflect the
different learning that goes on from each of our campus
colleges, so different departments.
So we're trying to show people that nature effects everybody in
every aspect and walk of life, whether it's from the School of
Business, Engineering, Health and education, etcetera.
(08:33):
All of the gardens have a way ofconnecting to those learning
objectives and getting people torealize that nature's our
lifeblood for humans. I would rather take a different
approach and teach you how you can be a better steward and take
action that is not a burden thatmakes change.
(08:58):
You talking about this, it reminds me of conversation we've
had one time where it's not necessarily doing one thing
perfectly. Maybe it's more of something,
the things that we can do imperfectly that can lead up to
these bigger impacts. And even in the how we're
showcasing that and experiencingthat can exist in so many
different ways. And you're talking about how the
(09:18):
garden is actually an extension as well to what's happening on
campus and teaching and learningand how we're experiencing these
benefits from the garden. And the story that you're
telling me one time is how you had some students that were in
the classroom, they're learning about how to take blood pressure
and their blood pressure was really high in the classroom.
They all had like white coat syndrome, even though they're
all learning, but then they cameout into the garden and then
(09:41):
they did the same thing again, but their blood pressure was
lower. That showed this like immediate
physiological response to the students engaging in that garden
that they can see as part of that educational experience.
So this is like one example, of course, you know, but where else
are you seeing within the Botanical Garden and how
(10:03):
students are engaging the garden?
They're engaging in a lot of different ways, both from a
physiological aspect, like with the nursing students, which they
do that all the time now, which is really cool.
But they also come out and they do our edimental tours and learn
about edible ornamental plants. So they realize that their
(10:25):
garden that surrounds them doesn't have have to be the
traditional agricultural or raised garden box that their
food and other things are part of their actual ornamental
garden. They can use it like ACA
Siluana, for example, Pineapple guava, one of my faves.
The flowers taste like pineapple, the petal, right?
(10:48):
Yummy. Put it in a salad.
Today I actually did a workshop with, again, kind of along the
lines of edimentals and ethnobotany, and we talked about
beauty Berry and I had beauty Berry Jelly samples, I had
elderberry Jelly samples. We did teas and tinctures.
(11:09):
And we talked about how the beauty Berry not only makes this
really great jam and Jelly, how it's antioxidant so it helps to
get rid of heavy metals from ourbodies and all those vitamin
nutrient elements. But then it was really fun to
also teach them how our indigenous societies use the
leaves to repel insects, biting insects.
(11:33):
And you tear up the leaves and it releases the oils and it
helps you with mosquito bites. And then we showed them how to
make their own bug spray. So the original deep that's.
Really cool. So I think it's really neat
because what you're doing is, you know, there's this
understanding, it's like there'sthis disconnect that exists
within, you know, how we perceive the world or how a lot
(11:54):
of people perceive the world. And like in nature, it's like
people in nature don't coexist really anymore.
And that's actually a really cool story.
We talked about ethnobotany. You know, it's like how do
traditional different cultural groups use plants?
And I think when you're kind of showcasing that to the students,
(12:15):
that's a really cool way to unveil or pull back a layer of
their existence and how they actually have this really deep
rooted connection to nature thatmaybe they have never seen or
experienced before. And that's incredibly valuable.
And again, that's an experience that you can only have, you
know, in certain curated events or places like a Botanical
(12:37):
Garden. So these are these different
ways that we're in. You're engaging the students,
but there's different ways that we can, the Botanical Garden can
probably engage the community. Because I know you've looked at
doing some research or other projects.
Can you give any examples of some, like research that you've
been trying to do or wanting to do or test that you're doing at
(12:58):
the Botanical Garden? So one of the big ones that
we're working on right now is floating wetland islands.
So floating wetland islands are curated to mimic basically the
Everglades islands. And you place an island, an
artificial island in a, in a pond, a water body and you would
(13:20):
add plants to it. In my case, I use beddover
grass. You can use native plants and
then the roots will reach into the water and act as an estuary
for fish under underneath. But the big thing is that the
roots are pulling up from the plant, all the heavy metals, all
of the extra nutrient loads fromgrass clippings, etcetera dying
(13:42):
off and they're releasing nitrogen, which would in turn
typically cause an algae bloom. But if you have a big enough
island, 5% to water body coverage, those roots will pull
out all of those nutrient loads,take them up and keep your water
clean and clear while also providing habitat for wildlife
(14:02):
up on top. And I gave a garden tour about 3
years ago, 2 1/2 three years agoto a group of about 35 talked
about the benefits of the floating island, how we want to
do a pilot project because we already know from studies
there's already proof of concept.
So we wanted to do it on a much bigger scale.
And in the meantime time we havethis one smaller floating island
(14:25):
that acts as basically proof of concept.
Well, the woman from one of the women from the tour group really
latched on to this discussion that was only 5 or 10 minutes
out of an hour and a half tour and went back to her community.
Over a couple of years of back and forth, them not wanting to
do it, she finally gifted it to their community and said, OK, my
(14:49):
dying wish is I'm gifting you my, you know, my estate and I
want you to install these gardens so when I'm dead and
gone, if they don't work and getrid of them.
But I want these floating, thesefloating gardens, these floating
wetland islands. No way for like for her
community that was part of her. I don't, I don't want to say
(15:09):
dying wish, but it's like part of her estate.
Yeah, it is it in in essence to say was her dying wish and so
the they didn't have a choice but to say yes.
So yeah. Yeah.
But what's cool about it though is that the community at first
didn't you know, or at least themanagers operations really
(15:32):
didn't want to embrace it. They really felt like it was
going to be a lot of extra work for them and they weren't sold.
And then once they started doingthe research, they are 100% on
board. They did not value engineer out
a single element and they just got installed.
Let's than a month ago. Really.
And how long ago was this initial tour that you've had?
(15:54):
2 1/2 years ago. Wow.
So now I'm going to meet with them in a couple weeks and we're
now gonna see how we can get ourstudents to test and do the
study at their facility since they already invested the big
dollars. Yeah, you can use, you do like
something like lake watch, like late watch program protocol to
(16:16):
test the water. Oh, that's fantastic.
See, these are the things that Ilove to hear because in
extension we use, we use this term called ripple effect
mapping. And this is, I think a great
example is you created an experience as educational
experience in this one person, you know, like, like we can do
this, you know, and they were persistent, sound like they were
(16:40):
very persistent. And it led to this now this
community adopting this big change too, because it's not an
easy change to kind of say we'regoing to do floating wetlands,
but for the fact that then they're like, Oh no, they bought
into it. The community did, and they
didn't value engineer anything out of it.
(17:01):
I think that's a testament to kind of say this is an impact
from the Botanical Garden. Absolutely.
And what's even better is that this particular community has
other like communities elsewhere.
So now they're looking to add them to their as part of their
lake management program across the board.
Wow. Yeah.
So that one experience, it was the drop in the water and it
(17:24):
rippled out to this community where this this individual that
was at the tour rippled out to her community and it had an
impact now on this management company or the people that are
overseeing this management. And it's going to ripple out
further until other communities.That's a huge impact.
That's a massive impact. Good for you and your team.
(17:44):
Yeah, it's really cool and I'm super excited.
They're already seeing the effects of the water quality in
just a short period of time, andeverything hasn't grown in yet.
We even gave a lecture at FNG DLA on this.
So I'm hoping we'll do more of that so that we can maybe others
that heard that lecture hear about this story and that that
(18:07):
it also creates an additional ripple and inspire somebody else
as well. And it's not very often we get
to find out about how we've impacted somebody or community.
So yeah, super, super exciting stuff.
Well, follow up question just because it was relevant to our
conversation. When you first implemented the
(18:28):
floating wetland, could you havedone it better?
Was it perfect when you first? Implemented not it was too
small, it doesn't even cover the5% of the water body.
But I needed something to talk about since I believe in it.
See, and that's the thing, it's like it doesn't doesn't have to
be perfect. It's like the doing something,
even if it's imperfect can lead to bigger impact.
(18:51):
So I think this is a great example of that well.
Sometimes it's better than perfect, right?
Exactly. Exactly.
Because then you never get it done.
You'll still be talking about it.
Yeah. And then hopefully this will in
turn allow us to actually do thethe study on campus as well.
(19:12):
But if not, we're going to be talking with the community and
potentially A donor to help fundthe student study.
Oh cool, does it actually get some like empirical research and
all that? Stuff bringing it back to us,
How cool is that? Oh, that is great.
Well, I want to go further because I mean, this is a great
success. This isn't the only success that
(19:33):
you all have had at the Botanical Garden.
From what I understand, you all have recently been given an
award. Can you tell us a little bit
about? That Yeah.
So we were just notified that wereceived the Florida Native
Plant Society's Award of Excellence for our category for
our Bioswell. Our Bioswell garden is one of my
(19:53):
faves. I mean, it's like saying, you
know, like we talked about before with like kids, you know,
we don't really have a favorite,but you know, sometimes ones
like just a little bit more in the forefront at the moment.
They're, they're a little more active.
I don't know, but yeah. So we're super stoked about it.
(20:14):
The award from them required us to have the garden at least a
couple years old. So it's not like a typical
garden awards where somebody's like just installed something,
they send pictures in and then they get this award.
And then if you were to go back to the gardens that won the
awards 2 years later, they don'tnecessarily look good.
(20:36):
Well, a garden you should look, it's worse when it's first
planted, not its best for starters, or you didn't do
things right. So what I love about this award
and what makes it extra special is the fact that you have to
show the pictures of before you have to show when it was planted
and then you got to show it now after a few years to show that
(20:57):
it's grown in, it's maintainableand then it requires a certain
level of a number of natives. In addition to us receiving that
award, it was also received the Florida Friendly Landscapings
newer natural designation. So we're the second natural
(21:18):
designation in Duval County withthat garden and then two others
that subsequently followed it. Well, congratulations.
I mean, that's, that's great. That's great recognition, you
know, but the, the success that you've had with all this, it's
not just, you know, it's not just you and your team that's
there on campus. Through your efforts, you've
(21:39):
actually worked with like I knowyou have master Gardener
volunteers come out there, you have student volunteer groups.
What are some of those differentways you've been engaging the
community as part of helping maintain the botanical?
Not just maintaining the Botanical Garden, but providing
that educational programming with the Botanic Garden.
Yeah, that's really cool. So our Master Gardeners do play
(22:02):
a huge role. They played a huge role in
helping us to become a BotanicalGarden to provide that extra
layer to get us over the hurdle.And they also help us with
programming. So does our staff.
Don't no knock on our staff. Our staff worker their their
tails off and they do a wonderful job.
(22:24):
But they do help us with programming.
They do come out and provide educational events.
We had last year we were recognized in Roots Magazine,
thought to be confused with Duval County's UFI Fits
extension Roots Magazine. Oh, that's true, yeah.
It's a it's a global magazine and our volunteer program was
(22:49):
one of nine selected internationally to be featured
for the impact that our volunteers had on our garden,
and that was really cool. We recorded over 9600 volunteer
hours in 2024 which is massive. How many hours?
Over 9600. Was it 9600?
And yeah. That's 4.5.
(23:12):
That's like a. Quarter of $1,000,000 worth of
volunteer service. Yeah, this is about.
This is just huge. Yeah.
And, and and also the equivalentof 4.57 in change, something
like that. Full time employees.
Wow. Yeah.
And they and they and our volunteers are across the board.
It's students, it's faculty, it's our Master Gardeners, our
(23:36):
tree stewards, garden enthusiast, bright future teens
that come out. We get corporate corporations
that come out and do volunteer days.
You know, we work with Alden Rd.Exceptional Learning Center.
So those are kids with intellectual developmental
differences. We work with, we are OTC kids
(24:00):
and you know, so we've got all kinds of people making all kinds
of differences in different areas, whether it's in the
garden itself, providing education, weed, invasive weed
management control. We've got a new program we're
working on for that that's really exciting and that's going
(24:21):
to be involving our students again.
So UNF has guaranteed all of itsstudents to have an experiential
opportunity similar to like an internship on the job training.
So we've had an issue with some of our invasive weeds and trying
to manage them. And I, we have a wetland club
(24:44):
and we have some other students interested in environmentalism.
We have a new degree in that. And I thought of an idea and I
got it approved is why don't we have these students get trained
by at IFIS extension, go throughthe educational process, take
the exam to get their pest control licenses to treat see
(25:07):
invasive weeds like coral Aldesia.
So of course we want to manuallycontrol as much as possible, but
coral Aldesia has a 98% germination rate, so every
Berry. Billions of berries, yeah.
Every Berry is a plant, right? And each plant can produce
several 100 berries per year, sothe population can get really
(25:29):
out of control. And then if you break off a
single root, it'll still re rootitself.
It's just a nightmare to to man manage.
So we have it in one area and we're trying to control it.
There's several acres that are infested and we've gotten about
1/2 an acre with a year and a half's worth of manual work
trying to get rid of it. So we feel like we've made
(25:51):
progress, but manually it's going to take us forever.
So if we can have these studentstrained to be able to treat this
with the proper herbicides, withthe proper PPE, so our personal
protection equipment, with a license that they can take with
them, especially the students that are looking at going into
(26:12):
jobs and environmentalism, they're going to be required of
this, you know? Oh, yeah.
And they're already have that. I mean that's that's more
marketable for them to have thatcertification and license, you
know, assuming they're going to be working in Florida, but
sometimes they have reciprocity with other states with those
license. So I mean, that's of huge value,
(26:32):
especially for employers. Yeah.
So what we're thinking about or what we are going to do is we're
going to give them the the education, let them take the
exam. We'll provide them the PPE, we
will provide them on the job trainers to go out and work with
them, right. So we make sure everything's
(26:54):
mixed correctly plant ID. We are also going to track GPS
mark and label where everything's at.
Put that into our tree plotter system that also tracks all of
our other plants. We can also designate any other
invasive exotics like camphor trees or right that we need to
treat and then they get on the job training they get to take
(27:17):
this license with them I'll evenpay for their CEU classes, you
know in education while they're here and working for us.
So in exchange, they they get a great benefit, we get a great
benefit. And it also shows that while
we're trying to use the best management practices and avoid
(27:39):
herbicides wherever possible, there is a point in time where
you're going to have to pull outsomething from the toolbox.
Yeah, yeah, especially, you know, it's like we we promote
integrated pest management with everything we do.
But if you know, like the cultural, mechanical or
biological controls aren't cutting it, sometimes you have
to go straight to that chemical application.
(28:00):
But and I think this goes, you know, providing this opportunity
goes just reiterates, it doesn'tgo back, but it reiterates the
value of the campus being a Botanical Garden because then
you're providing applicable experiential learning
opportunities to the students oncampus.
That then provides them additional like in this specific
(28:22):
example, their license, their card holders, and that makes
makes them more hireable to employers when they start
looking for jobs. So I think that's, that's
fantastic. You know, and with everything
we've talked about so far with the Botanical Garden, you know,
a lot has been really thinking about that perspective of how
we're looking at that value of the Botanical Garden on campus.
(28:45):
But botanical gardens have broader reaches.
And you talked a little bit about the communities and then
how you want to roll out earth shapes in a broader perspective
in the future. But can you briefly talk about
how has the community outside ofcampus in Jacksonville, the
school's organizations, how theyreally been engaging with the
(29:08):
Botanical Garden? So the last few years I've been
kind of on the download. We provided over 100 and 5 to
120 different educational events, garden garden tours,
base of weed roundups, helping with the pitcher plant
restoration in our blog. So we have an area where we used
(29:33):
to do controlled burns. We aren't able to do this one
area. So the area got a little bit
overgrown and it was starting tochoke out the pitcher plant.
So we've been going in and restoring this location with the
naturally occurred hooded pitcher plant.
So the community's look at taking part in that alongside
our students and restoring that area.
So we're providing a lot of those opportunities year round.
(29:57):
We're going back. To that quote that we mentioned
with David Attenborough at the very beginning, you know, if
children don't grow up knowing about nature and appreciating
it, they will not understand it.And if they don't understand it,
they won't protect it. And if they don't protect it,
who will? So you're reconnecting a lot of
people back to this natural areathrough educational program, the
(30:20):
experiences that they have of just being there or just like in
earth shapes, just having peoplejust walk in the grass, you
know, just something like that. But again, going back to that
quote, one of the term, that oneterm that we've used before is
the term nature deficit disorder.
And that's commonly used to describe how disconnected people
(30:42):
have become from the natural world.
And we kind of alluded to that. We're talking about ethnobotany
is like, wow, people are seeing how we actually engage with
nature. Do you feel that like this
Botanic Garden in the middle of Jacksonville and the things that
you're doing is like really working towards addressing
nature deficit disorder? Absolutely, because we, the
(31:04):
Botanical Garden isn't just our built gardens, it's also our
natural lands. You know, the Sawmill Slough,
which is actually a federal wildlife preserves.
But we're trying to get you intothose natural spaces.
At the same time, I want you to also understand that our built
gardens have to replace and act as part of our natural lands
(31:25):
that are being degradated. In other words, those are just
as significant because sometimespeople when you talk about
forest bathing or nature deficitor disorder, they think of the
lack of it's got to be a naturalland only, right, Right.
And destroy pristine lands, parks, you know, park lands like
the national parks, though not abuilt park like soccer parks or
(31:49):
fields and such. But those built gardens now
though, is we're trying to show the interconnection between them
and how they are also wildlife corridors, how what we're doing
with how we maintain them. So when people come on our
garden tours, we talked to them a little bit about how we
maintain our gardens and how 14 of them are certified Florida
(32:10):
friendly landscaping. And that gives us a little bit
more latitude 1 to do things right, but to show that every
garden doesn't have to be super pristine and that you can leave
the leaves. You can cut up tree branches and
let it degrade in the soil or allow a bird to use it for nest
building. And we're trying to create that
(32:31):
connection between the two spaces, which kind of goes into
the Ptolemy's thing, but bringing nature home as well.
But we're trying to like make sure that you understand that
both are important and you need to protect both and that you can
do a better job on your plant selections through Florida
friendly landscaping. And if we do those things well
(32:55):
and we teach you how to do those, so when you come on
campus and you see our gardening, you can go, oh, I
could do that at home. Oh, I didn't know that.
You know, Rosemary could be a wonderful ground cover in my
yard. It doesn't have to be in that
raised planner box. You know, if I can get you to
(33:16):
incorporate some of those littlethings and then you start
getting into nature and you start understanding that, you
start interacting with it, then that helps tremendously.
As we come to our end of time, II want to ask you, you know
what's next? What when we're thinking about
UNS Botanic Garden, what's that big next step that you all have
(33:40):
that you want to do? I know earth shapes, you want to
kind of go as like a traveling thing around the city and the
county, but what's your big challenges and big goals that
you have coming up? So we want to continue to expand
our volunteer program. We want to incorporate more of
our students, getting more of our faculty involved, doing more
(34:00):
experiential learning opportunities like some of the
ones we mentioned. And and expanding upon that,
we'd like to do more events on campus.
And we are in the process of acquiring the world's largest
crying Lily collection. Nestor White lives in
Middleburg. He's got a bigger collection
than Jinx. And he was going to give it to
(34:21):
Jinx. Yeah.
And instead he's gifting it to us because he even talked to
Disney and several others. So it is the world's largest
over 450 different cultivars. But because crying OPS are so
cool for how you can propagate them, because the stolens are
they're so big, it's really easyto crossbreed them, right?
Yeah. So I had this idea when I was
(34:42):
talking to Nestor, and he was talking about how easy it is.
And that's how he ended up with all these different cultivars.
And I've got all his records for40 years on top of it.
Way. Yeah, so.
Like I've seen photos of his collection of the collection so.
It's incredible. Yeah, but he was telling me
about how when you crossbreed and you end up with the seeds
(35:04):
and you don't know for three to four years before that plant
blooms what your new hybrid is. My brain goes Ding, Ding, Ding.
Students graduate in three to four years.
How cool would it be to do a hort therapy program where we
bring in our students, teach them all about the crynums, have
(35:24):
them create their own plant, right.
Do the big. Time.
Measure up, yes. And then when it blooms, they
bloom. But it's not.
It's not the coolest thing. Oh, that's so neat.
And I want to do that program not only.
So it's kind of twofold, it's a longitudinal study that I'm
looking at doing. Yeah.
So what I thought we could do iswe would take the the top
(35:48):
incoming class, middle and bottom right, a handful of kids
from each equal amounts. And in the first semester they
would come in and they would work with a certified hort
therapist, right? I have a friend of mine run the
program and very, very intentional.
And then we would do a survey onhow are you feeling today when
(36:09):
they come in and then how you feeling when you leave.
In the meantime, the students are researching or crying on
learning all about it, doing allthe measurements, etcetera.
The following year, I want the students that attended the first
year to act as the mentors for the next group.
And we have another group opinion, OK.
As their plants continue to growthird year, I want them to run
(36:32):
the program with the hort therapist just monitoring,
supervising second year acts as the mentors, right right.
Fourth year they do their capstone project on it and they
it's. Almost.
You're almost creating like it'sown, like it's a four year
process where you kind of you'rekind of getting the system
moving and once it's moving it kind of you just nurture it and
(36:55):
it kind of moves itself to a certain extent.
Yeah. And then on top of that, so each
year all the students are takingthat survey when they come into
class. Just super quick answer the
question, how you feel today? You know, are you happy, sad,
angry, whatever, like little like emoji face or something
like that and then how you feel when you leave.
So that's the longitudinal part.So then you can see how this is
(37:18):
making a positive impact. Then the second aspect of it
would be does the students in the upper level, middle and
bottom tier for, you know, incoming freshmen when they
start out because they had higher test scores, maybe better
grades, etcetera. Do they all plateau out and kind
of become at the same level, or do that curve stay the same?
(37:39):
Oh, like I'd, I'd imagine like your first couple years that it
occurs going to be the same. But I'd imagine once you have
like that, like I'd imagine eventually you'll pull people up
higher. That's what we.
Have those other levels of engagement, Yeah.
Because I mean, if you think about it, hort therapy, I know
(38:00):
that. I know you're friends with.
Confidence. Yeah, they're getting
confidence. I mean, I know you're friends
with Lee Deals. She probably has a bunch of like
really cool surveys just on this.
But like what you're doing is you're also one of your
constructs that you should probably include, not just, you
know, how well are you feeling? Because I think there's a
connection is that that community, you're building a
(38:21):
community around that and how much of an influence does that
have? So you're building a community
around work therapy. That's two different variables
that you can kind of look at andsee how.
That. Because I imagine it's like
they're both going to have a factor, you know?
Can you isolate one from the other?
I guess you could because, you know, you can maybe compare it
(38:43):
to other student groups where maybe there's community, but the
horticulture is not part of it, right?
Like can you evaluate a club over 4 years?
Oh, I like that angle. And then compare that to like
the hort therapy group. So you have community.
So then you can kind of parse those variables out also.
(39:04):
And then I mean, there's always an option is who else is doing
this? Don't have that community
aspect, just the hort therapy only.
That'd be really cool. Yeah.
So all of that came about in my head when Nestor told me that it
takes three to four years for the new plant to bloom.
I just, I think it's kind of a cool way to engage the world's
(39:27):
largest collection. Like, how do we take it to that
next level? How do we bring it back home
where it's significant to somebody else that's not a plant
winner? Rhonda, it's been such a
pleasure having you with us today, the leadership that you
provided to you. And F Botanic Garden, I know it
didn't start with you there, butyou took what was existing on
(39:49):
UNS campus and you really grew it and you really pushed it to
new possibilities and new ideas to have bigger, broader impacts
within the Jacksonville community.
And I think that's such a valuable thing that you and your
team has have provided. And I think it's a great model
to kind of really push to what Botanic Gardens can do and
(40:11):
become. So I really want to thank you
for taking your time, spending it, your afternoon with me as we
kind of talk about the successesof UNF and a Botanic Garden.
And I encourage anyone. If you're in Jacksonville, stop
by the gardens and you can reachout to Rhonda and we'll make
sure that we feel provide those that contact information to get
a hold of you for like tour information and stuff like that.
(40:35):
So, Rhonda, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you. Appreciate you having me.
Absolutely one inspiring story from vision to reality, UNF
Botanical Garden is proving thatcampuses can be more than
classrooms. They can be living laboratories
that nurture both people and theplanet.
(40:56):
A big thank you to Rhonda Graciefor sharing the story and to
you, our listeners, for joining us.
If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe,
share, and leave us a review. Until next time, keep
cultivating curiosity and exploring the connections
between nature and community.
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