AHS announces 2013 award winners

 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Yew Dell Botanical Gardens Executive Director Paul Cappiello was recently given the American Horticulture Society’s most prestigious award, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award.

 

The award is given to individuals who make significant lifetime contributions to at least three of these horticultural fields: teaching, research, communications, plant exploration, administration, art, business and leadership. First awarded in 1958, it was named after Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954), noted horticulturist, educator and author.

 

Click here for a list of previous winners.

 

A researcher, educator, plant breeder, and author, Cappiello has served as the executive director of Yew Dell Botanical Gardens in Crestwood, Ky., since 2002. He led the transition of Yew Dell from the private estate and nursery of Theodore and Martha Lee Klein into a public garden with a national reputation as a center for horticultural excellence. Prior to Yew Dell, Cappiello was horticulture director at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky, for five years.The Garden Club of America recognized Cappiello’s leadership abilities with a Zone Horticulture Certificate of Acknowledgement in 2005.

 

The International Plant Propagators’ Society, for which Cappiello currently serves as Eastern Region president, elected him a Fellow in 2008 for outstanding contributions both to the organization and in the field of plant propagation and production through research and teaching in the green industry. Most recently, he received the Kentucky Nursery and Landscape Association Award of Special Merit.

 

The AHS also awarded Dennis J. Werner the Luther Burbank Award for extraordinary achievement in plant breeding. Werner has been on the faculty at North Carolina State University (NCSU) since 1979, and has been the JC Raulston Distinguished Professor of Horticultural Science there since 2007. Along with his teaching responsibilities, he has established a national reputation for his plant breeding work. His research with peaches resulted in the introduction of numerous improved edible peach cultivars that are now widely grown in the southeastern U.S.

 

More recently, he has focused on redbuds (Cercis spp.) and butterfly bush (Buddleia spp.), resulting in several introductions of each with improved characteristics and novel features. In addition to receiving several teaching awards from NCSU, Werner was named a Fellow of the American Society of Horticultural Science in 2011.

 

Neil Diboll, president of Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisc., received the Paul Ecke Jr. Commercial Award, which is given to an individual or company whose commitment to excellence in the field of commercial horticulture contributes to the betterment of gardening practices everywhere.

 

Diboll is a pioneer in the use of North American prairie plants in modern landscapes. He took over the half-acre nursery in 1982 and steadily expanded it to the current 200 acres that serves as a retail and mail-order source for a wide selection of prairie natives. Thanks in large part to his efforts over the last few decades, prairie plants have gone from being viewed as weeds to becoming integral components of gardens, meadows, wildlife habitat, and rain gardens.

 

Diboll is also a sought-after consultant and speaker, lecturing worldwide on topics such as establishing prairie meadows, designing with native plants, and the socio-economic benefits of converting high-maintenance, resource-intensive landscapes into self-sustaining ecological sanctuaries.

 

Click here to read about the recipients of the other 2013 AGS Great American Gardeners Awards.

 

The winners will be honored at a banquet and ceremony June 6, at River Farm in Alexandria, Va.