Desert Botanical Garden

2020 Eloise Payne Luquer Medal

For exceptional achievement in botanical research, education, exhibition and conservation of desert plants of the world, with special emphasis on the Sonoran Desert.

Proposed by: Arizona Columbine Garden Club, Zone XII

The Desert Botanical Garden (DBG), founded in 1937, pursues its mission to research, conserve, exhibit, and educate people about plants from arid areas around the world, especially the plants of the Sonoran Desert. With 25,000 plants and over 4,000 species, the DBG engages in world-class botanical work, collaborating with the Center for Plant Conservation, by maintaining a National Collection of Endangered Plants, including 58 imperiled species, an Herbarium with 83,000 specimens, and a seed bank with frozen seed and pollen. Annually, over 700,000 visitors experience the beauty of desert plants and, through robust educational programs, learn about the environment, natural history, horticulture, gardening, and landscaping.

The Eloise Payne Luquer Medal is awarded for special achievement in the field of botany that may include medical research, the fine arts, or education. The interpretation of the award is to be elastic and imaginative.

Ms. Luquer was a botanist, naturalist, lecturer, and wildflower painter, fittingly called the “Audubon of Wildflowers.” Her wide-ranging interests encompassed founding the first District Nursing Association in the U.S., the Nature Trail at the Poundridge Reservation, and teaching gardening to the women at Bedford Hills Reformatory and Prison. The medal was designed in 1949 by sculptor Chester Beach and presented and endowed by Bedford Garden Club, Bedford Hills, New York, in memory of their distinguished member, Eloise Payne Luquer. Previous recipients include botanist and medical researcher John Nash Ott (1963), horticulturist, conservationist, and author Dr. E. Lucy Braun (1966), artist and writer Cherie Pettit (2005), and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (2007).

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