Inside Fort Worth Botanic Garden’s Living Collections

A great public garden can change your whole day and sometimes your whole life. We sit down with Seth Hamby, Director of Living Collections at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, to talk about the real work behind a place that feels effortless to visitors: the plant records, the people, the science, and the stories that turn a landscape into a living collection. 

We trace Seth’s path into horticulture through volunteering, fieldwork, and conservation genetics, including research on an endemic Texas prairie clover and statewide genome collecting tied to the Smithsonian Global Genome Initiative for Gardens. Then we go behind the scenes at Fort Worth Botanic Garden as it earns the ASHS HortLandmark designation, exploring what makes it a standout public garden in the Dallas Fort Worth area, from the Rose Garden and famously peaceful Japanese Garden to a rainforest conservatory and seasonal Butterflies in the Garden.

We also get practical about collections management including why GPS mapping matters and how a modern plant database supports research, education, and better visitor experiences. Seth also shares how volunteers help sustain the accredited Begonia collection and other details. We close with what we wish every student knew about careers in public horticulture, internships, and building opportunities by showing up consistently.

Subscribe for more conversations on Plants, People, Science, then share this episode with a friend who loves botanic gardens and leave us a review. What’s the public garden that always resets your brain?

Learn more about Fort Worth Botanic Garden at https://fwbg.org/.

Send us Fan Mail

Learn more about the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) at  https://ashs.org/.
HortTechnology, HortScience and the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science are all open-access and peer-reviewed journals, published by the American Society of Horticultural Science (ASHS). Find them at journals.ashs.org.

Consider becoming an ASHS member at https://ashs.org/page/Becomeamember!

You can also find the official webpage for Plants, People, Science at ashs.org/plantspeoplesciencepodcast, and we encourage you to send us feedback or suggestions at https://ashs.org/webinarpodcastsuggestion.

Podcast transcripts are available at https://plantspeoplescience.buzzsprout.com.

On LinkedIn find Sam Humphrey at linkedin.com/in/samson-humphrey. Curt Rom is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/curt-rom-611085134/. Lena Wilson is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-wilson-2531a5141/.

Thank you for listening!

...