2024: A year growth, cultural connection, and student engagement

The 2024 fiscal year ended with Cornell Botanic Gardens achieving advances in conservation, sustainability, climate adaptation, student engagement, and more. We safeguarded rare plants, protected trees threatened by invasive insects, collaborated with partners on campus and in the community to understand and celebrate culturally significant plants. We expanded our student engaged-learning program, adding a fourth team. Thanks to a strengthened budget, we replaced long-unfilled staff positions, empowering us to implement more mission-critical work and to create landscapes and garden spaces both beautiful and adaptive to climate change.

We continued to connect with ever-more diverse audiences, with programs, spaces, plants, and exhibits created through partnerships with people of many cultures, backgrounds, and identities. In 2025, we will focus on understanding, appreciating, and celebrating plants of significance to North American Indigenous nations, with collaborations that further acknowledge the Indigenous land on which Cornell Botanic Gardens resides and foster bonds of shared community.

The accomplishments of 2024 and those of coming years rely on the financial support of donors. Cornell Botanic Gardens remains the natural centerpiece of Cornell University, enriching the academic enterprise and offering respite within its 3,800 acres. With you, we harness the power of plants and the richness of human cultures to create a world of diversity, beauty, and hope.