Discovery Days launched this year. Designed to be valuable to people of all ages, this brand-new event series attracted a wide audience and featured engaging educational activities and booths on busy weekend days. 

Over the past year, we’ve evolved the way we approach education and classes, focusing on expanding classes to appeal to wider and more varied interest groups. As a result, spring saw a surge in class registration and attendance with many classes now selling out within hours of being posted online. We revisited our marketing efforts for classes to be able to inspire more people to plant and enjoy native plants.

Our after-hours events attracted 33,292 guests in the past fiscal year. Events like Tuesday Twilights draw people to the Wildflower Center that otherwise may not visit, allowing us to reach new people with our mission.

We successfully launched our new Storybook Walk program, partnering with children’s picture book authors to reproduce entire books in a large format that can be read and enjoyed in the Luci and Ian Family Garden. This program is a great way to get excited kids to slow down, read and learn in nature.

​During the last fiscal year, conservation staff logged 43 new conservation collections from 16 Texas counties. This included seeds, cuttings and plant specimens. The herbarium added 106 specimens, 40 of which were new to the collection.

We launched a new initiative to test the stock of our seed bank for germination to prove that the seeds are still viable.  We’ve begun 37 germination tests from 26 seed bank accessions, which means we’ve tested just over three percent of the seed bank so far. Science takes a little time, and we’ll continue to conduct these viability tests over the next several years.

We started extensive monitoring of the United States’ only endangered oak, Hinckley’s oak (Quercus hinckleyi), which is found exclusively in Big Bend Ranch State Park in far West Texas. This project was supported by small grants through BGCI, APGA and the International Oak Society in collaboration with a lab at Oklahoma State University. We also received nearly $300,000 in new funding from the Texas Comptroller to further develop this project. In addition, our team successfully grew more than 300 big red sage (Salvia pentstemonoides) individuals from every known population of this at-risk Texas Hill Country endemic, and completed a one-year, APGA-funded collaboration with the Atlanta Botanic Garden and South Carolina Botanic Garden to seed bank one of the rarest magnolias in North America, the pyramid magnolia (Magnolia pyramidata), in an effort that was funded by APGA.

We finished renovations on our lab spaces, creating highly improved workspaces with significant storage enhancements. Adding two additional seed bank staff has allowed us to add germination trials to test the viability of our seeds, create better processes for stewarding our rare plant collections, and significantly expand our collection of rare species.

Our new Texas Plant Conservation Alliance organized a statewide meeting at the Center, inviting nearly 150 attendees from 53 different organizations. The meeting resulted in impactful collaborations and highlighted ongoing work by plant conservation groups.

From fall 2024 to 2025, our staff mentored 19 undergraduates from The University of Texas at Austin through our Student Experiences program, which offers internships and undergraduate research opportunities. These students were involved in projects including the development of educational materials, pollinator monitoring, and rare seed collection and stewardship.

We also proudly said goodbye to two of our former students/research technicians as they left for new graduate programs: Summer Montoya, now a master’s student in geology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Laurel Miller, now a doctoral student in microbiology at The University of California, Berkeley.

More than 26,000 hours were logged by 726 volunteers in our gardens and trails in the past fiscal year! The Wildflower Center has historically relied on our corps of dedicated and invested volunteers to not only help maintain gardens but also to support operations in the Shop and Gallery and many other areas. The Center would not have its current reach or success without the support of such strong and committed volunteers.

The new Texas Native Plant Primer, written by Director of Horticulture Andrea DeLong-Amaya, quickly became an Amazon best seller in its category. The beautifully illustrated guide introduces readers to more than 100 native Texas plants, offering practical tips on how to grow them successfully in gardens large and small. Andrea was also recognized with the esteemed Scott Garden and Horticulture Award for her lifelong contribution to the field of horticulture.

With a generous donation from the Tres Grace Foundation, we concluded a program to provide free admission to the Wildflower Center for almost 8,000 students and chaperones from Title 1 schools. Additionally, we welcomed 502 community members through our Community Access program.

Legacy gifts are a powerful testament to the lasting connection many feel with the Wildflower Center and were a key focus area for our development team. These thoughtful contributions extend far beyond a lifetime, helping to ensure the Center’s continued growth, innovation and impact for generations to come. Such gifts are not only vital to our mission but they also reflect an extraordinary generosity and vision. This year, we celebrate and honor those remarkable individuals who have chosen to leave a planned gift with the Center. Their commitment inspires us and we are deeply grateful.

Our generous donors provided much-needed funds for our work in fiscal year 2024-2025, and we are grateful for their steadfast support.

A generous donation from the Tres Grace Family Foundation enabled us to launch our new Community Access Program, which provides free Wildflower Center admission to underserved people in Austin.

Luminations returned to the Wildflower Center and celebrated its highest grossing year yet. More than 23,000 guests strolled through nearly two miles of lights and enjoyed hot chocolate, food trucks and interactive play for all ages.

Fortlandia, our annual exhibition of locally designed secret hideouts, celebrated its sixth year, solidifying itself as a family tradition for many Austinites.

Wildflower Journeys, our environmental travel program, took its first voyage in February 2024. Participants enjoyed an exclusive tour of México’s gardens and natural wonders, including a visit to the monarch reserve, where monarch butterflies congregate every winter.

Athena, our resident great horned owl, returned to her nest for the 14th consecutive year. This time, people across the globe followed along as her owlets hatched and fledged, thanks to the owl cam we installed in partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Our new summer exhibit, Dinosaurs Around the World, drove traffic to our gardens during a typically slower season, introduced the Wildflower Center to many new people, and yielded a 25% boost in new memberships during its run.

Construction wrapped on the Wildflower Cave Classroom, an outdoor space designed to minimize impact on the cave and its surrounding land and plants, while allowing students to explore and learn in innovative ways.

One of our members donated a full collection of native Texas ferns to us; enough to start a fernery. We’re installing a special greenhouse to show off the collection and look forward to seeing it grow.

Major gifts from Mary Cook, Page and John Schreck, and Nancy Garrison are enabling us to remodel, restore and reinvent the McDermott Center into an open-air, multi-use facility that will serve our mission for years to come.

Our plant sales continue to grow and blossom, becoming more popular than ever. Our fall, winter and spring plant sales brought in 117% of their target revenue.

We transformed our retail space into a new shop and gallery, focused on local, ethically produced, artisan-made goods that reflect and support our mission. Sales are strong, so guests seem to approve.

We launched a new conservation project, focused on the collection and propagation of four rare Prunus trees, to increase numbers and promote diversity of the genus, which includes plums, cherries, peaches and almonds.

Our team continues to monitor the few remaining wild populations of the threatened big red sage (Salvia pentstemonoides) and champion its survival by studying pollinator activity and growing seeds collected from our gardens to establish baseline data.

Generous gifts from Jeanie and Tom Carter and the Winn Family Foundation will enable the Wildflower Center to expand our Science and Conservation efforts – and the entire department – significantly in the next two years.

A team from the Wildflower Center collected DNA samples – for ongoing study and conservation – from the only existing colony of Quercus hinckleyi, a rare oak species, near Big Bend Ranch State Park.

Our team led the launch of the Texas Plant Conservation Alliance, a collaboration of like-minded organizations and professionals, dedicated to sharing resources and learnings around plant conservation in Texas.

We conducted and supported 679 acres of prescribed burns – for ecological restoration, wildfire management and biological diversity – including on our own land and partner properties around the state.