Sit in on one of the horticulture staff’s check-in meetings and you’ll quickly notice Kathleen Glasman because she’s game for everything: another team member needs some help running a volunteer opportunity in the Arboretum? She raises her hand. Someone else needs help clearing brush out of their area? She’s available and ready to help. She’s been in the horticulture game for more than 30 years, and her expertise shines through whenever you talk to her. 

Naomi Reibold is Rare Care’s new Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator. Hailing from Indiana, she has slowly made her way further west over the past five years following federal public land jobs as a botany technician. She has worked in Missouri, Idaho, Utah and Oregon. For the past two years, Naomi has spent her field seasons in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest learning and falling in love with our native, endemic and rare plants. 

Pacific lanceleaf springbeauty (Claytonia multiscapa ssp. pacifica) is a tiny plant for such a big name! Though seldom seen, it can be found in the Olympic Mountains, Vancouver Island and the North Cascade Range of British Columbia. A surveyor would need to look for it early in the season just after snowmelt in wet subalpine and alpine meadows at elevations above 4,100 feet. 

Lincoln Erbeck’s humor and joy contrast with the technical and often dangerous nature of his work. As a climbing arborist and horticulturist at the UW Botanic Gardens, Lincoln is not just responsible for the health of trees in the Washington Park Arboretum — he plays a vital role in ensuring the safety of the people who visit. And he does this all with a big smile on his face. 

Meet Kevin Rusch, a horticulturalist at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens and part of the team of folks who care for the collections at the Arboretum!

If you visit the grove of Sycopsis at the Pacific Connections Garden along Arboretum Drive this February you will be in for a treat – the flowers, while not showstoppers individually, are blooming in incredible quantity this winter.

 
Scientific Name:  Juniperus morrisonicola
Common Name: Yushan Juniper Family: Cupressaceae Native Range: Taiwanese mountains Location in the Arboretum: There are 8 of these trees in our collection; all accessioned in 1938.  Seven are located within the Pinetum area and one is located at the north end of Crabapple meadow. 
 

The Yushan Juniper is an elegant conifer native to a small area of the Taiwanese mountain ranges, which are the tallest mountains in Southeast Asia.     

Read all about this gentle giant of a tree, Cupressus gigantea, and the work we do at the Arboretum to preserve this endangered species’ genetic diversity.

Out among the undulating biscuit and swale topography of the sagebrush-steppe in east-central Washington lives Spalding’s catchfly (Silene spaldingii). The basalt studded landscape feels vast and open under the blue skies of summer. For three weeks in August of 2023, you could find Allie Howell and I hiking between hundreds of patches of Spalding’s catchfly scattered over 50 square miles. Our task was to gather an updated population count after the devastating Whitney fire in 2020 that swept through a large section of the plant’s range in east-central Washington.