TAKE ONE
Gardener News Serving the Agricultural, Gardening and Landscaping Communities
May, 2016
GARDENERNEWS.COM
TAKE ONE No. 157
Rutgers Gardens Celebrates its Centennial
Tom Castronovo/Photos
By Tom Castronovo Executive Editor Back in the 1980s, I took a few short course classes through the Rutgers Office of Continuing Professional Education, or OCPE, at Rutgers Cook-College. These classes provided me with the highest quality opportunity
for lifelong learning. These classes were handson training which helped me advance my career in the horticultural and landscaping field. Today, I still keep in touch with several of my instructors. Some of these instructors were influential in helping me create and publish the Gardener News. Thank you!
While I was learning at Rutgers I was introduced to the Rutgers Gardens. This was my first encounter to a real outdoor living classroom. The gardens brought the books and the lectures to life. I feel it altogether proper and fitting to recognize my first encounter to an outdoor living classroom by saluting the Rutgers Gardens in this
month’s cover story. This month, the gardens, whose diverse variety of landscape plants have origins that span the globe, celebrate their 100th anniversary. Below is an in-depth interview with Bruce Crawford, Director of Rutgers Gardens, an adjunct professor in Landscape Architecture Department
at Rutgers University, and a featured columnist in the Gardener News. When and how did Rutgers Gardens begin? The first portion of the land, a 35-acre tract which is now the center of Rutgers Gardens, was purchased by the University on May 17, 1916. Most of the land was for a vegetable (Cont. on page 9)