WALLACE DESERT GARDEN FAQs: BY CATHY BABCOCK | PHOTO BY DARA HEWARD Boyce Thompson Arboretum’s newsletter of January 2016 introduced readers to the Wallace Desert Garden project. The article on page 10 in that journal explained who H. B. Wallace was, how the estate garden came to be, what he collected, and why it ended up in Superior, AZ. As the article further explains, the plants in the collection are from all over the world. Please visit wallace.btarboretum. org for further information. Did BTA take every single plant from the Wallace Desert Garden? No. All plants were inventoried by Native Resources International (NRI), including all of the native trees and shrubs. Boyce Thompson Arboretum (BTA) was not allowed to take certain native plants unless they were in the building envelopes. BTA and Logan Simpson, an architectural design group with whom we have been working, went out to the Wallace Desert Garden (WDG) and, over the course of several months, assessed the health of each plant and tagged the plants BTA wished to salvage. BTA then worked with NRI, and tagged the plants to be
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salvaged with a box size and the season in which they should be moved. How many plants were relocated? Between December 2015 and October 2017, just over 2,000 plants were boxed and transported to BTA by NRI. They were moved 75 miles from Sincuidados in north Scottsdale to BTA, which took a total of 100 semi-truck loads. A little more than 3,000 plants were hand-dug by BTA staff between May 2015 and October 2017 and placed in shaded holding areas. Approximately 230 of the plants are legumes that were grown from seed by DELEP, our Desert Legume Program, and given to WDG. When all was said and done, 5,052 plants were salvaged, comprising 1,457 taxa (species, cultivars, hybrids, varieties, etc.). Of these, about 300 are unique and new to the existing collections. Where will the new trail be located? We are creating a brand new trail which will be called The Wallace Desert Garden at Boyce Thompson Arboretum. At the time of this writing, almost half of the boxes have been planted. The
