At my feet, tiny golden brush strokes are painted atop the cheerfully lobed leaves of a Potentilla cranztii. I imagine I’m perched on a blustry ledge in the Central Highlands of Scotland, but as my gaze moves past the tiny cinquefoil, I see flora of the Caucasus Mountains, the Himalayas and North Africa.

My exploration takes place while safely anchored at an elevation of a mere 525 feet above sea level, thanks to the Walter C. Heasley Rock Garden at Cornell Botanic Gardens. This botanically significant garden serves as a portal to high places. It is a conduit for diverse narratives ranging from alpine ecology and rock gardening to climate change mitigation practices implemented by Indigenous cultures around the world.

Since 2017, dedicated members of the Adirondack Chapter of North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS) have mounted a small but mighty volunteer effort to salvage this 2,000-square-foot garden, rescuing its plant collection from bindweed overgrowth and introducing new, thriving acquisitions. Originally designed in 1981 to represent diverse alpine habitats, the garden declined in the early 2000s due to lack of sustained funding and limited staff resources. NARGS volunteers and Botanic Gardens’ staff verified existing plants in the garden and identified potential new additions, making this hillside beauty a gem of our cultivated gardens. 
 

While we made progress to physically recover the garden, there was another matter to address: ensuring accurate plant records. Maintaining up-to-date plant records is an essential task to ensure proper management, preservation, and value retention of plants in a botanic garden.

In 2023, we determined that the crucial next phase was a comprehensive inventory, mapping, and labeling initiative to transform the garden into an informative and engaging space and to meet our curatorial standards as a living museum. Again, NARGS played a key role, this time by providing funding through its Norman Singer Endowment Fund. The fund supports promotion, preservation, and education on alpine plants, ecology, and culture.

Much behind-the-scenes work took place over the coming year. We inventoried, mapped, photographed, and verified plants in the garden and uploaded the data and images to our plant records database.

Visitors to the rock garden today (whether in-person or virtual) see the result of  this phase of the project. We created 42 new display labels as well as accession tags to ensure the collection of more than 120 plants is current, fully identified, and trackable. At any given time about 20 of the new display labels will be placed in the gardens to highlight the plants in bloom without overwhelming the garden with signage.

Online visitors can easily access the cataloged rock garden plants via our website. Users navigate to the Garden Explorer feature to  view details, exact location, and photos of the plants in the garden. Simply select Walter C. Heasley Rock Garden in the “location” field and the garden unfolds before you.

Several key people contributed to this project—Kerry Dillon, plant records specialist and Robert Wesley, botanist. Cornell University student Natalie Rose Kaleipuanani Wilcox, who was earning a B.S. in Plant Sciences, helped write our grant proposal. Volunteers from the Adirondack Chapter of NARGS played critical roles. Mary Squyres, Carol Eichler, and Marlene Kobre  contributed both to the grant proposal and to restoration of the physical garden. They donated rock garden plants, helped identify unknown plants, and continue to maintain the garden, which would not be possible without their dedicated help.

More than 70,000 visitors a year stroll alongside and enjoy the Walter C. Heasley Rock Garden, especially during its showiest months—early spring through summer. Enjoy it in person this year or virtually any time via the Garden Explorer feature on our website. We hope in the future to secure sustaining funds to ensure the continuation and improvement of this hidden treasure within our botanical collections.

Emily Detrick is the Elizabeth Weaver Director of Horticulture for Cornell Botanic Gardens.