Gold Medal Recipients

Roly was recognized for his philanthropy as a Benefactor in Perpetuity in 2000, and was elected Board Chair that same year, serving until 2009. Under his leadership, the Botanical Garden’s infrastructure, programs, and collections management developed and prospered in many transformative ways, including the creation of the Capital Projects Underwriting Fund, the restoration of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, and the completion of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. A leadership gift from Roly and his wife, Eliot, made possible the construction of the state-of-the-art Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, which opened in 2005.​

The Gold Medal was accepted by his son Malcolm, who also served NYBG as a Trustee, at the 131st Annual Meetings of the Corporation and Board in 2022.​

“Of all the successes that the Garden has attained during these years, putting the gardens, collections, and exhibitions in the front rank of the horticulture at the world’s public gardens is an exhilarating feeling and tremendous achievement by the Garden’s talented, creative, hard-working people.” – Wilson “Roly” Nolen​

To accomplish this, Long assembled and led a management team that revitalized the Garden, initiating a comprehensive, long-range planning process that is both the blueprint for the Garden’s success and a model for other organizations. During his administration, the Garden completed three 7-year strategic plans, 1993–1999, 2001–2007, and 2009–2015 with goals realized through efforts to fund programmatic and audience development initiatives as well as operating support, endowment, and capital projects. The current strategic plan, 2016–2021, has put in place specific goals to assure institutional strength well into the future.

During Long’s 29-year tenure, NYBG experienced a period of renaissance and revitalization, enabling the Garden’s infrastructure and landscape to accommodate more visitors than ever before while positively impacting the lives of millions more regionally and abroad. This ambitious work included the restoration of iconic structures such as the landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory among 43 major capital projects, which include 15 new gardens and landscape renovations. He spearheaded the expansion and invigoration of the Garden’s exhibitions, creating a comprehensive multidisciplinary program that showcases NYBG’s unique strengths as a cultural institution. Additionally, he oversaw vast improvements to the Garden’s scientific campus, including the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, and the Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory.

A recognized leader in New York’s cultural community, Long has been honored with a wide variety of awards that underscore the important horticultural, scientific, and educational achievements he has been responsible for, including Common Cause’s NYC Cultural Leadership Award; The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Ten-4-Ten Stewardship Award; The New York Botanical Garden’s Founders Award; and the Native Plant Center’s Acorn Award. In 2014 he received The Saint Nicholas Society’s Medal of Merit for distinguished service to the City of New York. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and received that organization’s LaGasse Medal in 2015. Long has also been awarded Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters by City University of New York and Fordham University.

Gregory Long was elected President Emeritus of NYBG in June 2018.

Tom was elected to NYBG’s Board of Trustees in 1975 and joined the Executive Committee in 1977. He had a keen interest in the Garden’s operations, and throughout the ’70s and ’80s, when the Garden and all NYC cultural institutions were operating under severe fiscal constraints, he would visit weekly to meet with staff and offer his expertise as well as encouragement and reassurance.

In 1991 Tom was named Chairman of the Board, and he worked closely with the staff to lay the foundation for a reinvigorated NYBG that now welcomes more than one million visitors each year. During Tom’s tenure as Chairman, NYBG restored the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, opened the 12-acre Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, established the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics, and built the International Plant Science Center. Tom retired as Chairman of the Board and was elected Chairman Emeritus in 2000, and continued in that role until his death on March 20, 2017.

Tom and Anne’s philanthropy has been vital to the Garden, and together they established seven endowed chairs. Their interest in the institutional history of NYBG, particularly its research, is evident as all of the chairs carry the names of central figures of the Garden’s botanical legacy. Through their generosity, one of the best known, most iconic books on North American plants, Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada (NYBG Press, 1991) by Garden scientists Henry Gleason and Arthur Cronquist, is currently being completely updated. The Hubbards’ largesse also helped to found the Garden’s new Center for Conservation Strategy.

Ms. Rogers was the vision and the force behind this massive undertaking, which began with such high-profile projects as the restoration of the Sheep Meadow, Belvedere Castle, and the Dairy. She led the Conservancy until 1996, when she founded the Cityscape Institute. In 2002 she created the Garden History and Landscape Studies curriculum at the Bard Graduate Center, and since 2005 has served as president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, which she also established. She is a noted writer on the history of landscape design and the cultural meaning of place. For the award-winning publication Flora Illustrata: Great Works from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden (2014), she contributed the essay “‘An American Kew’” on the history of NYBG’s site as one of New York’s premier cultural landscapes. Ms. Rogers is a longtime supporter of the Garden, both as a Patron and advisor, and has served on the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Visiting Committee since 2004. She has authored eight important landscape and gardening books, including Green Metropolis: The Extraordinary Landscapes of New York City as Nature, History, and Design (2016) and Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries (2011).

In addition to being an influential writer and lecturer, she serves on the boards of many cultural institutions. Ms. White joined the NYBG Board of Trustees in 1989, and now serves as Vice Chairman, and is also a long-serving member of the Executive Committee. Her generosity and leadership, and that of her late husband Leon Levy, have been instrumental in dramatically enhancing the overall visitor experience at NYBG, including the creation of the Rodney White Country Garden, the Ladies’ Border, and the Shelby White and Leon Levy Reading Room in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library. Most recently, the new 3.5-acre Native Plant Garden, a gift of the Leon Levy Foundation, is a masterpiece of modern landscape design and horticulture, and the Leon Levy Visitor Center welcomes more than a million visitors each year. Both stand as two of the most significant improvements that have been made to the Garden’s National Historic Landmark landscape.

In 1980 he coined the term “biological diversity,” and since then he has been a key figure in global ecology initiatives and conservation efforts, informing the work of scientists worldwide. Dr. Lovejoy, who is University Professor at George Mason University and Senior Fellow of the United Nations Foundation, works at the interface of science and environmental policy. A longtime member of the Garden’s Board of Trustees, he helped to focus the world’s attention on the issue of tropical deforestation starting in the 1970s and served on advisory councils under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. He has helped inform the NYBG Board, and many members of the U.S. Congress, of Amazon conservation issues at the Biological Fragments of Forest Fragments Project in Brazil, an important site of Garden scientific research in the 1980s and 1990s, and he has tirelessly informed the public of the perils of climate change through numerous technical and popular publications as well as symposia and presentations.

Completing a monumental project that traces its origins back to the 1930s, NYBG Press is publishing the final volume of the Holmgrens’ magnum opus, Intermountain Flora, which documents in extensive detail the plant life found between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains in the American West. Their scientific accomplishments have garnered important recognition by their colleagues, including the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, which awarded them the 2012 Asa Gray Award for outstanding lifetime achievement, named for the most important American botanist of the 19th century. In addition to the Holmgrens’ work on Intermountain Flora, the Society cited them for their long stewardship of the Index Herbariorum, a comprehensive listing of the world’s approximately 3,400 herbaria (plant research collections) and the roughly 10,000 curators who run them. The Holmgrens co-edited the Index for many years, seeing it through several print editions and then creating an online database.

Now Senior Vice Chairman, Lewis joined the Board of Trustees in 1993, and in 1994 he and his late wife, Dorothy, provided a generous gift to establish the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics, dedicated to addressing critical questions about the identification and genealogy of plants through DNA analysis. Through this Program and the subsequently established Plant Genomics Program, Cullman Curators, whose expertise is spread across the plant kingdom—from the earliest branches of the green algae and land plants to the major branches of the flowering plants—work at the forefront of the global scientific effort to assemble the evolutionary Tree of Life for all plants and fungi. The Cullman Program focuses the Garden’s molecular research effort on DNA barcoding—a technique that uses small, standardized fragments of DNA as a species identity-tag. Mr. Cullman’s continuing leadership and generosity have enabled the state-of-the-art Cullman Molecular Systematics Laboratory and the Cullman Conference Room, two facilities that greatly improved the Garden’s science and education infrastructure, and as well as ongoing support of summer science internships for students.

His books reflect on universal themes of courage and survival, and illuminate the fact that medicine is both a science and an art. Dr. Sacks often brought many of the patients profiled in Awakenings to the Garden to share his love of plants and experience the serenity and awareness he found in nature. During other visits, he enjoyed bringing together people from the various fields that appealed to his eclectic nature so they could learn from each other: Botanists learned about cephalopods from marine biologists; geologists learned about plant science from botanists. Long fascinated by ferns and other primitive plants and their ability to survive and adapt, he authored several books that are partly botanical in nature, including Oaxaca Journal, which chronicles a fern-hunting trip to Mexico with members of the American Fern Society.

Her concern with the welfare of the environment at the local, national, and international levels engaged her staunch support of the Garden’s scientific programs. The most visible element of Mrs. Mertz’s legacy at NYBG is the renowned LuEsther T. Mertz Library, the most important botanical and horticultural research library in the world. Scientists, landscape designers, artists, students, gardeners, and horticulturists from across the globe turn to the Mertz Library and its vast holdings, which represent almost one thousand years of accumulated knowledge, for inspiration and information. While many of the Garden’s science, horticulture, and education programs do not bear the Mrs. Mertz’s name, all have benefited from her generosity. After her death in 1991, important gifts from her Estate and from the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust have supported core programs at the Garden in horticulture, science, and visitor services that have contributed to the institution’s ongoing renaissance.

He served as a scientist and scientific administrator at the Garden, arriving as a postdoctoral research associate in 1963 and departing as Senior Vice President for Science and Founding Director of the Institute of Economic Botany in 1988, when he returned to his native Great Britain. He became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1988–1999), and was knighted in 1995. During his 25 years at NYBG, Professor Prance conducted prodigious plant exploration and research, mentored graduate students, developed new programs and partnerships, and championed the importance of plant conservation and sustainable development. In 1964 he developed a an exploration program in the Amazon, working with local botanical institutions, most notably the National Amazonian Research Institute in Manaus. In the course of his fieldwork for the Garden in Amazonia, Prof. Prance and his collaborators discovered more than 400 plant species new to science. Currently Scientific Director of the Eden Project in Cornwall, he has continued his engagement with NYBG since 1998 as a Distinguished Counsellor to the Board of Trustees. Prof. Prance’s recent memoir, That Glorious Forest, was published by NYBG Press in 2014.

Mrs. Haupt joined the Board of Trustees in 1975, when the Conservatory—NYBG’s iconic and perhaps most treasured feature as the preeminent Victorian-style glasshouse in America—was in serious need of repair and renovation. Mrs. Haupt’s initial gift funded the restoration of the Conservatory’s Palms of the Americas Gallery. Within the next two years, she underwrote the restoration of the entire building. In 1978 the Conservatory was renamed to honor her generous support. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mrs. Haupt’s subsequent gifts helped advance the Garden’s collections and programs as well as the ongoing rehabilitation of the Conservatory. The grand reopening of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in May 1997 marked the beginning of a new era of outstanding public horticulture at the Garden and symbolized its unprecedented investment in the related fields of science and education. More than two generations of NYBG visitors have been grateful for her unwavering and unprecedented contributions to American horticulture.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, and Pellegrino University Research Professor, Emeritus at Harvard University, Professor Wilson has influenced the dialogue on the relationship between people and the rest of the biosphere more than perhaps anyone else; the most recent of his 32 books, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, is emblematic of the tremendous breadth and depth of his impact on humanity’s environmental psyche. Prof. Wilson served on the Board of Trustees of the Garden from 1992 to 1998, and since then as a Distinguished Counsellor to the Board. Through his writings, lectures, and steadfast commitment to the well-being of the Garden’s mission, he has underscored that since the beginning of civilization, people have strived to understand the diversity of living forms around them, noting, “Plants in particular, because of their vital importance and captivating beauty, are central to human life. The modern botanical garden, of which The New York Botanical Garden is a premier example, is the most advanced form of institution devoted to them.”