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Take 5: Greensfelder Medalist Beth Rothschild

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 14, 2011 - As she spoke with the St. Louis Beacon, Beth Rothschild sat in the president's office at the Missouri Botanical Garden, looking out at an elm tree, the biggest she'd ever seen. In her home of Great Britain, many elms have fallen to disease. But here, she had view of a healthy and hearty one.

"That, for me, is like a major excitement," she said.

Today, Rothschild will receive the 2011 Greensfelder Medal from the Missouri Botanical Garden. The award is not given out every year, only when merited.

"Her significant accomplishments and support in the field of conservation have made a great impact in the field of botany as a whole," said the garden's president, Peter Wyse Jackson, in a press release.

Rothschild's history with botany and conservation go both far back in her own life and in the legacy of her family. Her great great uncle, Charles Rothschild, is thought to be responsible for bringing the conservation movement to England.

During her visit, Rothschild spent a few minutes with the St. Louis Beacon to talk about her work and life.

On her first visit to Missouri, Rothschild said "I'm sort of just getting to know Missouri, which seems like a lovely place."

Your family has a long history in the conservation movement. Please tell us a little about growing up in that environment and how it shaped who you are today?

Rothschild: As a child, I knew from the age of 8 that I wanted to be a gardener. I just always loved gardens. It wasn't a definite decision, it was just something that was in me that I did it and then realized that I was doing it. My parents recognized that I was very interested in plants; and when I was 14, they got me a greenhouse on the roof of our house, but they didn't want me to go into horticulture as a career because, at that time, it wasn't cool. Horticulture was still uncouth. But when I was 16, I met my great Aunt Miriam Rothschild. ... She realized what I wanted to do and helped me to form the early years of my horticulture career.

Among the projects you've worked on is the restoration of the water and rock gardens at Waddesdon Manor. Please tell us about this project and what it's meant to you?

Rothschild: I've been involved in the restoration of Waddesdon for nearly 30 years. When I took over the running of the garden, the whole garden was completely overgrown. ... I started looking into the history of it and I actually based the restoration of the garden on some slides I found in my cousin's drawer, actually her cleaning closet. There was this box of old slides, the first ever, apparently, hand-colored slides that were made. They were glass, and then someone had painted them. They depicted the parterre, the main Victorian part of the garden as it used to be. While I was a student at Kew Gardens in London, my main project was to try and put the parterre back together as it used to be. But rather than using Victorian plants, we started to develop modern methods to be able to maintain this garden with nine gardeners instead of 60 gardeners. So it's a modern interpretation of a Victorian garden.

You are a board member of the Botanic Gardens Conservation International, which works with countries around the world to conserve threatened plants. How is this work tied with issues such as poverty and climate change?

Rothschild: We're almost like a sort of a hub into which all the botanic gardens of the world feed. We organize and help to conserve the really threatened plants of the world. Also we do workshops around the world to both tackle climate change and to tackle poverty alleviation. For instance, when I was working in Mexico, I'd go into the forest and teach the indigenous people that, rather than cut down the really enormous beautiful trees, you use those trees as shade, and underneath them you grow another crop, and underneath that you would grow another crop, so you've got like five stages of vegetation in the forest. In the forest around them there were certain plants they could use to thatch their roofs for shelter, or to feed their cattle, or to fence in their cattle, or to make tea with, and also to have little parts of their garden or their plot which was used for medicinal plants. Everything about botanic garden conservation is about trying to help poverty alleviation, as well as make the people safer and have a better lifestyle.

What projects are you working on now?

Rothschild: I continue my work at Waddesdon. I'm about to go to a garden in Bordeaux in France, which is a private commission. ... I'm doing another private commission in southwest England. I work with the Natural History Museum in London, I work for some Jewish charities and I'm a patron of the Great Fen Project.

This week, you're in St. Louis to receive the Greensfelder Award at the Missouri Botanical Garden. In all your travels, where are your favorite gardens?

Rothschild: Villa Lante in Italy; Chatsworth, Derbyshire, Great Britain; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and now Missouri; Eythrope Kitchen Garden, Buckinghamshire, Great Britain; Rousham, Oxfordshore, Great Britain; Westonbirt Arboretum, Glos, Great Britain; Botanic Gardens, Givat Ram, Jerusalem; Linnaeum Botanic Gardens, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Vaux Le Viscount in France and Waddesdon Manor.

Kristen Hare