Project funded via the Global Botanic Garden Fund by The Botanist.

Project completed: 2021

Funds raised for the Global Botanic Garden Fund have supported many projects over the years. One such is the work by the San Francisco Botanic Garden where the GBGF provided vital funding for their mission of conserving rare magnolias through grafting.

By developing protocols for grafting wild threatened Magnolia species and with gardens across the United States working together to propagate these, the hope is that the trees will be added to each gardens’ collection, boosting their numbers and diversity and increasing their chances of survival. If successful, the teams involved will have established a model that could be extended across more gardens within the region, providing a high impact, low risk programme for preventing the extinction of these beautiful trees.

Working with expert grafter Leanne Kenealy based at the JC Raulston Arboretum, a collaborative effort between multiple institutions (San Francisco Botanic Garden, UC Botanical Garden, JC Raulston Arboretum, and Atlanta Botanical Garden) resulted in nine successfully propagated taxa, producing 35 plants for distribution between partnering gardens! This project helped form and strengthen partnerships, and generated propagation protocols to be shared broadly.

The successful partnerships created also helped raise $10,000 in private funds to pursue and expand this work in 2022 to include five additional gardens with significant Magnolia collections.