Before we had an opportunity to highlight Rand Plewak in the newsletter as a stellar professional at MEMBG, he rather suddenly up and left us in November. Rand resigned his position to pursue other personal goals. He was absolutely devoted to the botanical garden and channeled his efforts in any way he could to make it better, beginning as a volunteer gardener, then a part-time employee, next a senior nursery technician. In 1994 he became an extremely motivated senior garden manager.
Rand expanded our simple ideas for improving the botanical garden into better and grander schemes than I could have imagined. He developed and carefully cultivated the volunteer gardener program, which saved us during lean financial years; designed and built a number of hardscape features of the current garden; brought in very special plant materials for the collection; and streamlined all aspects of plant propagation, planting, and plant maintenance. His openness toward new ideas and projects, his creativity, his commitment to excellence are what we expect at UCLA. I consider myself privileged to have worked these years with Rand.
His is a very large pair of work shoes to fill. But we have hired J. Dale Witt to do just that. Dale will be joining our staff in early February from the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Belmont, North Carolina, a new 110-acre facility at which he has been as the horticulturist. He is no stranger to Southern California--a native who attended Pasadena City College, earned a bachelors degree at Cal Poly Pomona in landscape architecture, and worked seven years at the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum in Arcadia. Dale earned a master's degree in horticultural sciences from North Carolina State University in 1998, so he comes to use with great breadth of experience. Welcome aboard!