Record gift to Chicago Botanic Garden a boon for plant science, conservation, training
A major contribution will help the Chicago Botanic Garden study and conserve sensitive plant species, aiming to increase their numbers to reintroduce them to their habitats.
The Negaunee Foundation, a Northbrook-based organization that has supported cultural institutions such as Ravinia, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and The Field Museum, recently donated $21 million to the Chicago Botanic Garden at 1000 Lake-Cook Road in Glencoe.
The donation is the largest single gift to the 51-year-old botanic garden, and among the largest gifts of its kind to any such garden in the U.S., according to a news release.
"We're terribly excited about this gift and the stability it provides for our science program, and the opportunity to expand into several areas that we haven't been able to devote resources to in the past," said Kayri Havens, chief scientist and vice president for science at the garden's Negaunee Institute for Plant Conservation Science & Action. "We have been doing some of this work, but it will allow us to greatly expand this work."
The gift will fund a new position - a director of conservation impact - and expand the garden's Stewardship and Ecology of Natural Areas internship program that trains people interested in land-management careers. It will help build the Negaunee Institute - from the inside.
"It's not a gift for bricks and mortar, but for building staff, taking on new areas of research," Havens said.
The $21 million gift will help maintain the Negaunee Institute's "banks" of plant seed and pollen.
Though focused on species in the upper Midwest, the institute also works nationally.
Havens said the Negaunee Institute - "negaunee" translates to the Ojibwa word for pioneer - has been working for eight years to restore the Hawaiian plant alula, which currently exists only in botanic gardens. The Chicago Botanic Garden partners with the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai for this work.
Alula collections were so inbred, Havens said, that the plant was unable to reproduce. Work in laboratories now has restored the plant's fertility.
Havens said there's no Illinois plant quite as rare as the Hawaiian alula, but she's been working for 25 years to augment marshy grasslands in northeastern Illinois with the Eastern prairie fringed orchid.
A lot of these habitats are down to one or two orchids, Havens said. Partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Chicago Botanic Garden scientists have tried to increase the numbers using hand pollination.
"It is recovering, and it's a really rewarding thing to watch," Havens said.
The recent donation topped The Negaunee Foundation's five-year pledge in 2019 of $10 million to the Chicago Botanic Garden, at that time the largest donation to the Glencoe site.
According to Philanthropy News Digest, in addition to establishing and naming the Negaunee Institute for Plant Conservation Synthesis Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the 2019 gift supported scientist and staff positions formerly paid for by government grants, and funded a challenge grant for scholarships in Northwestern University's Plant Biology & Conservation graduate program.
Havens' goal is for the institute's accomplishments to translate to changes in land-management practices and policy.
"We're so very grateful and excited because of this gift," Havens said of the Negaunee Foundation's $21 million donation. "It's an investment in our department, in our research and in the planet, and that makes us so very happy."