An iconic U.S. tourist destination has created a new position to care for its thriving plant life.
According to PennLive, Deb Wiles now leads horticultural work at Hershey Gardens after training at Longwood Gardens and completing a master’s degree in garden history at the University of Greenwich in London.
Wiles previously worked at Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, Texas, where she held a senior horticulturist position for six years.
She now fills a role created to handle daily work with plants across outdoor grounds spanning 23 acres, as well as indoor spaces like the conservatory and butterfly atrium.
Wiles won’t make quick changes. She wants to spend a full year watching how the gardens move through the seasons.
One of her English mentors taught her that gardens need years of observation to truly understand, so she told PennLive she’ll spend a year studying what succeeds, what fails, and where improvements make sense.
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Her horticultural path started after departing the business world to join Longwood Gardens’ Professional Gardener program. After graduating, she interned at Great Dixter House and Gardens in England before pursuing her graduate studies.
She has toured several hundred botanical spaces across four nations during her quarter-century career working with plants.
Her first priority involves creating better documentation systems for the many thousands of specimens in the collection. Good record-keeping supports educational programs, conservation work, health monitoring, and knowledge sharing with peer organizations.
If you visit Hershey Gardens, you’ll see how Milton Hershey’s original vision lives on through committed staff. Access remains open to all visitors, matching the founder’s intent when he established the space during the 1930s.
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“Mr. Hershey believed enough in creating places of beauty and enjoyment for the community that he built the garden here and always intended it for public use,” she noted.
“He obviously had a vision and a passion for creating a beautiful community with places for everyone to enjoy.”
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