Joining me is Mr. Paul Redman, hi Paul.
Hi.
Even when he was appearing on Oklahoma Gardening as a Horticulture student,
Paul Redman had a knack for educating the public about agriculture.
I've known Paul essentially all of my--
nearly all of my academic career.
When I first finished graduate school, was hired
by Oklahoma State University back in 1989,
I met Paul is an undergraduate student and
he was very interested in public horticulture,
which at that time was a very new term
many people weren't quite sure what even that meant.
Paul was hired by the National Tropical Botanical Garden
in Hawaii, but would return to O-S-U
to receive his Master’s degree.
And then his career took him to Ohio
and eventually he was recruited away to be the executive
director and now president of Longwood Gardens out in Pennsylvania.
Longwood Gardens is one of
the premier botanical gardens in the world.
And it's about a thousand fifty acres,
about 400 of that is actual display gardens.
It’s really quite amazing.
In Paul's tenure, which I believe he started back in 2006, so 11 years ago essentially--
Longwood has grown from a visitorship of about three-quarters of a million
to now just under 1.4 million guests per year.
I’ve been one of those visitors and I know what’s it like.
Not just looking at the flowers and the landscape,
but the people and how they are interacting
with that.
It’s a really rich experience.
That’s happened because of Paul’s leadership.
As executive director, Paul also had the opportunity
to help a new generation of O-S-U students.We've
had a number of our other students go there as Longwood fellows
and Longwood graduate students.
Having Paul at Longwood, really gives us an opportunity to create some
more opportunities for our students
to have that unique kind of learning.
Whether you're from OSU or you're just a young
person in public horticulture, he wants to
encourage those people.
And so I think that's just you know speaks to his character.
Current Oklahoma Gardening host, Casey Hentges, attended the Longwood
graduate program as a student.
He's a great guy.
You know I didn't really know him when I first met him,
but I think our OSU connection obviously,
when you're in Delaware or in Pennsylvania at Longwood Gardens you know when you find
somebody from home there's that instant connection there.
And on many weekends, visitors may be able to catch a glimpse Paul
strolling through Longwood.
Paul is out in the garden and checking in with guests, just observing guests, visiting
with guests, getting a pulse on the garden, but also looking at the garden itself.
You’d never know that he was kind of a famous person at that garden.
He's a very passionate man with respect to having such a strong vision.
And he's very passionate about growing the leadership in public horticulture.
We think agriculture is the traditional way but it's changing so much
it's more agriculture science and biotechnology and
a lot of that same principle is being done and applied at
Botanical Gardens too.
Paul Redman, a DASNR Distinguished Alumnus for 2017!