Friends of Boone County Arboretum has established a "Growing Forward" annual gift-giving campaign to accomplish various big-impact projects at the Arboretum. The contributions made from past years are summarized below.
2024 Project: Cultivating Capacity
The 2024 campaign was focused on expanding the capacity of the Friends organization, with several important goals to achieve during the upcoming year: increase horticultural and development staffing, establish new garden spaces, expand horticultural events and programming, begin research into a redesign of the Children’s Garden, and grow capacity for scientific research.
2023 Project: Cultivating Horticulture
The campaign for 2023 continued a focus on horticulture. Contributions were utilized to continue employment of part-time horticulturists, install 476 new plants in our collections, maintain partnerships with Iseli Nursery and Proven Winners for trialing their new plant releases, rejuvenate our Daylily Display Garden and redesign its layout with new cultivars, and replant our Butterfly Garden as a "Pollinator Garden" now that the 3-year pathway reconstruction project through that area is now complete.
2022 Project: A Renewal of Horticulture
The campaign for 2022 introduced our Horticulture Fund as a mechanism to support horticultural projects and staffing. Contributions were utilized to help us to renew our ArbNet Accreditation at Level IV - the highest possible level, add a second part-time horticulturist, install over 150 new plants in our collections, and begin 2 separate partnerships to be a trial site for Oregon-based Iseli Nursery and for Proven Winners.
2021 Project: Stability After An Unstable Year
Contributions were utilized to help stabilize the various Friends of Boone County Arboretum initiatives, after the world-wide coronavirus pandemic and the disruptions it created.
2020 Project: Underwriting the Arboretum-On-Wheels
Contributions were utilized to shore up the AOW Scholarship Fund, which allows us to provide our Arboretum On Wheels mobile environmental education program for free or at reduced cost to schools, libraries, Scout groups, or any organization that demonstrates economic need.
2019 Project: Institutional Capacity
As the Arboretum celebrated its 20-Year Anniversary in 2019, we highlighted three important ongoing funding areas of the Friends organization: Educational Outreach, Endowment, and General Operations.
2018 Project: Destination Signage
Expressway exit tourism destination wayfinding signage (the "big brown signs") for the Arboretum.
2017 Project: Arboretum-On-Wheels
The initial project for the Growing Forward campaign was the initial startup of the "Arboretum On Wheels," a mobile learning lab for at-school and community environmental education outreach, presented by staff of Friends of Boone County Arboretum.