By Jean Ponzi
EarthWays Center Celebrates Milestone
25 Years of Sustainable Solutions for You
Our Missouri Botanical Garden values sustainability on a par with care for plants, thanks to the work of the EarthWays Center, where 2025 is a notable year for the Garden’s sustainability team.
Through the 1990s, public calls for environmental action accelerated energy efficiency, recycling, renewable energy and Green Building practices. EarthWays evolved from this culture, and from Garden leadership of that decade’s Earth Day and World Environment Day events and community sustainability planning.
Thinking globally and acting locally, the Garden also helped marshal our area’s philanthropic, business and civic sectors to support ambitious renovation of an abandoned urban house to showcase emerging sustainable building and lifestyle options. This was the EarthWays Home, a unique feature in the City’s Grand Center arts district, developed by a visionary group with Earth Day roots and strong Garden ties.
This public education center became part of the Garden in 2000, staffed by six professionals who had been MERP (Missouri Energy Resources Project), an innovative school-based environmental education group. I continue serving on this team alongside Glenda Abney, who is now the Garden’s Vice President of Sustainability. Today’s EarthWays Center is nearly 30 people strong, including the Missouri Gateway Green Building Council.
The Garden proudly promoted the EarthWays Home alongside the Butterfly House and Shaw Nature Reserve as our Family of Attractions. EarthWays tours, classes, programs and events inspired hundreds of thousands of adults and youth. The annual Green Living Festival began as a street fest at the EarthWays Home. Don’t miss this year’s celebration, on Saturday June 7, 10 am to 5 pm at the Garden. I’ll be speaking at 3:15 about EarthWays Green heritage.
In 2011, EarthWays Center transplanted operations to Garden office space in the Commerce Bank Education Center. School and public programs continued to flourish as staff expertise and our range of audience service proliferated.
Today, the EarthWays team delivers 55 programs and projects around the St. Louis and Midwest regions. We work in schools and colleges, with businesses and local governments, and with homeowners. We provide training and certification for emerging and established professionals. Our Green Resources Info Service is a trusted source of sustainability guidance for the public.
And we help keep our Garden “walking the Green talk” and innovating around sustainability issues. EarthWays leads the Garden’s long-serving Green Team and Zero Waste Ambassador event volunteers. Collaborations with Science and Conservation and Butterfly House colleagues are addressing climate change through research, education and citizen science activity. A new Native Plant Working Group, led by staff of Shaw Nature Reserve and EarthWays, has mobilized Garden co-workers in peer-to-peer native plant learning and projects.
The EarthWays Center team is grateful for a wealth of working relationships over 25years of Garden service – and ready for Sustainable Solutions yet to come.
Jean Ponzi, Sustainability Specialist with the Garden’s EarthWays Center, gives talks on Green topics for organizations around our region. Reach her at greenresources@mobot.org.