GCA Awards Grant to Glenview Garden Club to Revitalize Woodland Park in Louisville, Kentucky.

Rare Orchids Discovered in Beargrass Preserve!

March 11, 2026

By: Blair Shelby

GCA awarded Glenview Garden Club (GGC) its second Partners for Plants (P4P) grant to collaborate with Olmsted Parks Conservancy (OPC) to protect a rare orchid in Beargrass Preserve, an urban woodland in Louisville, Kentucky.  OPC recently secured the 25-acre Beargrass Preserve adjacent to Cherokee Park, one of 18 Louisville parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

In 2004, OPC launched a campaign to revitalize the natural areas of Cherokee Park by first removing the invasive non-native amur honeysuckle (Lonicer maackii) from the woodland's understory. Many native plants which had never been recorded began to appear. The most exciting of these was the crested coral root orchid (Hexalectris spicata). This rare plant lives off fungi and decaying organic matter. It contains no chlorophyll and is therefore not green so it cannot photosynthesize. Because of this there is no need to produce leaves. 

In 2014, GCA awarded GGC their first P4P grant to protect the orchid in Cherokee Park by removing honeysuckle and cataloging the numbers and location of each plant when the plants emerged.  Along with an expanding orchid population, tall bell flower (Campanula americana) and columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) were identified.

This year GGC received another P4P grant to partner with OPC to continue the important work of managing invasives and monitoring biodiversity and plant populations in Beargrass Preserve.  GGC members and OPC volunteers spent a morning learning about the natural habitat and counting more than 100 orchids! While Olmsted did not design Beargrass Preserve, OPC and GGC is collaborating to continue this conservation legacy of preserving nature within a city.