July 22, 2013
Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator & Director of Outreach at Denver Botanic Gardens (photo by Charles Mann).
Our keynote speaker at the Grand Opening of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden at Museum Hill on Saturday was Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator & Director of Outreach at Denver Botanic Gardens. He has visited us before and seen the Gardens through construction always giving us encouraging words. In the Denver blog (Digging into the Gardens) her recently posted an article about his weekend with us celebrating the opening.
“When I was a “Mid-Century Modern” child growing up in Boulder, there were virtually no botanic gardens between the Mississippi River and California (if one can conveniently disregard Texas)…One of the delightful phenomena that has accompanied my maturation has been to watch dozens of botanic gardens spring up throughout the West–in just about every state–including a half dozen in Colorado alone. I have been privileged to have had a minor role in a few of these: I was the first person to speak to the newly organized Friends of the Albuquerque botanic garden when their garden was just a gleam in a few visionaries’ eyes. I likewise spoke to the Vail Town Council in September of 1983, arguing for the economic and aesthetic benefits of the Betty Ford Alpine Garden, long before that garden gained traction. I have fretted with many Santa Feans on the sidelines for decades while their dream of having a proper botanic garden in that cultivated capital city of New Mexico seemed to languish. This past weekend, however, saw the proper dedication of Santa Fe Botanical Garden.”
