Dr. Richard A. Jaynes

2021 Eloise Payne Luquer Medal

For his contributions to plant research, dedication to promoting conservation practices, commitment to teaching and sharing his knowledge, and encouraging wider accessibility of improved cultivars.

Proposed by: Garden Club of New Haven, Zone II

A botanist, horticulturist, researcher, and plant breeder, Dr. Richard Jaynes has devoted his life to plants, developing cultivars with improved habit and disease resistance. As the foremost authority on Kalmia latifolia, native mountain laurel, he has introduced more than forty cultivars, authored the definitive guide, and ensured the availability of these cultivars and many other unusual plants through his Broken Arrow Nursery. Mountain laurel has become a staple of cultivated landscapes. Dr. Jaynes is a devoted champion of native shrubs, working to expand the appreciation of these plants and their use in gardens. In addition, he edited the definitive reference guide on nut trees grown in the continental U.S. and Canada. His dedication to plant research, publishing, education, and encouraging wider accessibility of improved cultivars to amateur gardeners as well as professional horticulturists, perfectly reflects The Garden Club of America’s purpose to stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening.

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.

Eloise Payne Luquer (1862–1947) was a founder of the Bedford Garden Club, Zone III, GCA Conservation Committee chair (1929–36), and 1936 recipient of the GCA’s Achievement Medal. Eloise was a botanist, naturalist, lecturer, and wildflower painter. Her wide-ranging interests encompassed work with the District Nursing Association of Northwestern Westchester County, the establishment of the Trailside Nature Museum and nature trails at the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, and teaching gardening at the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills. The medal was designed in 1949 by sculptor Chester Beach and endowed by Bedford Garden Club in memory of their distinguished member.

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