Bulletin of Remarkable Trees: Vol. 3 No. 2
How the Arboretum's Plant Clinic grew from one man answering letters to a robust in-person and digital operation
I’ve touched on the extensive horticultural advice that my grandpa provided to so many plant enthusiasts throughout his career in previous issues of Bulletin of Remarkable Trees. His wealth of knowledge and patience for fielding questions from home gardeners was the precursor to the Morton Arboretum’s official Plant Clinic, which carries on this indispensable tradition.
The Sterling Morton Library has put together a wonderful collection of letters in which Grandpa Kammerer fields questions on a wide variety of topics, from requests to identify specimens to advice on growth patterns of Crabapple species. These inquiries came from varying sources—local home gardeners, of course, but also purveyors of nursery plants and even colleagues from arboreta and botanical gardens across the country.
Last week, I had the chance to talk to Julie Janoski, manager of the Morton Arboretum’s Plant Clinic, about the department’s work past and present.1 The official Plant Clinic at the Morton Arboretum was established in 1968, two years after my grandpa’s passing. Julie mentioned that Grandpa Kammerer had been the defacto plant clinic for decades. After his death, the questions didn’t stop coming in. There was a need for an established, official resource to supply the public with all the knowledge the Arboretum had to offer. Additionally, Julie commented that while the Plant Clinic now has different and expanded tools at its disposal to answer gardener questions, they are still fundamentally providing the same in-demand services, even all these years later.
One of the things that stuck out to me in reading my grandpa’s response letters is that a significant amount of the advice he gave was informed directly by experience at the Morton Arboretum, and if he didn’t have direct information, he would often refer the question asker to colleagues at other institutions. With dramatic advances in scientific knowledge, like DNA sequencing, and the internet allowing researchers to communicate over vast distances with lightning speed, the sources of information the Plant Clinic relies on to assist local homeowners have broadened significantly. Currently, Julie told me, Plant Clinic staff and volunteers look not only at findings that come out of the Arboretum’s own research but utilize horticultural knowledge as a whole, endeavoring to translate scientific findings into advice that the general public can use.
Another common occurrence I’ve noticed in the letters my grandpa fielded was the inclusion of plant material—to assist with identification or provide a sample of a diseased branch or leaf. Undoubtedly, including physical materials from the plant in question was incredibly helpful when my grandpa was working over the possible identities of a leaf, especially in earlier years when photographs were typically black and white and far less detailed than they are now. In 2022, however, pictures play a crucial role in helping the Plant Clinic help question-askers. Never more so than during the early days of the pandemic, when in-person services were not available.
Grandpa Kammerer wore many horticultural hats during his career at the Arboretum, but his initial foray into the plant world was as a landscape architect, graduating from the University of Illinois Landscape Architecture program. He taught many garden design classes at the Arboretum, and unsurprisingly people frequently wrote him for design advice and opinion. Although Arboretum staff were not encouraged (or possibly even allowed) to take paid outside design work, lending his eye for design and form to enthusiastic homeowners was encouraged.
Nowadays, the Plant Clinic is busy enough with questions that delving into specific design inquiries would be impossible. But, Julie noted, some questions still require both technical information and personal judgment to answer—as she put it, “function and form in balance.”
On the collection of letters in the library’s gallery, Julie said that my grandpa's care in crafting responses to the questions he received is what stands out most to her. This wealth of written responses, answers to an incredibly wide variety of gardening and horticulture questions, make it evident that he put an enormous amount of time and effort into being of assistance. He had no shortage of official duties at the Arboretum but was incredibly willing to take in fellow plant enthusiasts’ questions, whether by mail or in-person. I’m reminded of something Carol Doty, a former Arboretum employee, noted when I talked with her last summer about her experience working alongside my grandpa in the early 1960s: “he was very gracious with everybody, the questioners…sometimes you would wonder; they’re taking up a lot of his time!”
In interviewing Julie, I noticed the same passion for informing and aiding the public as was clearly present in my grandpa. It’s lovely to see that his legacy of being a fount of knowledge, eager to assist gardeners in his community (and beyond) is still alive and well at the Arboretum.
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For more on the Plant Clinic and the services they provide, check out this New York Times article from last year!
I absolutely love how you bring out your grandfather's fundamental kindness, and how he made dealing with him such an evident pleasure for those who consulted him. I remember a few years ago, I asked someone a question about her area of expertise, purely to get a conversation going, and she sent me a "Here let me Google that for you" gif.😬 No matter how technically sophisticated we become, people need kindness. Thanks for this.
Seeing how someone's passion for an interesting topic created an air of wonder and growth with the people around them is so inspiring! I had no idea that there were cool items like the tree growth chart in the library's archives; I'd love to see it myself one day!