Talk: The Magic & Meaning of Tree Gardens in the 21st Century

What are gardens, parks and arboretums? Are they safe harbor for threatened species? Are they museums or collections of living things? Are they loci of social and economic justice? Guest lecturer Dr. William “Ned” Friedman, director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, discusses the diverse roles of botanical gardens in this presentation. Dr. Friedman will reveal some of the amazing subtleties of nature and discuss the local and global ambitions of the world’s most wonderful collection of woody plants.

A brief reception with light food and drinks will be held before the talk.

Ned (William) Friedman is the director of the Arnold Arboretum, the oldest arboretum in the United States, and the Arnold Professor of Biology at Harvard University.  Dr. Friedman received his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley.  Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor of biology at the University of Colorado.  He is a fellow if the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Linnaean Society of London.  His research centers around the growth and development of plants, particularly the evolutionary development of the singular reproductive system of flowering plants and how they came to dominate the earth.

The talk and reception are part of the Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Tropical and Economic Botany, sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin Department of Integrative Biology and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Jean Andrews (1924-2010) graduated from UT Austin in 1944 with a bachelor of science degree in home economics and later became a patron of the Plant Biology Program. She completed her master’s degree in 1966 at Texas A&M University and received a Ph.D. in art from North Texas State University in 1976. Andrews was inducted into the Hall of Honor of the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences in 1991. She was awarded the Distinguished Alumna award by the University of North Texas at Denton in 1991 and by the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. Her support of the Graduate Program in Plant Biology and the Department of Integrative Biology continues through an endowment she established for the Jean Andrews Visiting Faculty Fellowship that brings a scholar in tropical or economic botany to UT each year.