Remember, we were trying to redress an imbalance we had inflicted on nature, which meant that we had to unlock some of nature's secrets. In the lost past, nature had worked her magic in silence, never telling why she painted a hillside in coreopsis and a valley in Texas blue bonnets, the Smokies in mountain laurel. Why there could be a carpet of gaillardia here and there a bank of primrose. If we were to encourage their use across this broad land, we would have to learn what would grow where, and why, how their seeds were germinated and their life cycles extended, in what conditions they would flourish and grow and return next year. So research would inevitably be the Wildflower Center's second mission.
People have to come to understand their usefulness and their cycles.
We have also initiated research on the re-establishment of an endangered species and then put it back into its natural habitat. Our research has stimulated similar work by universities and botanic gardens across the nation on the wildflowers and other native plants of their region. So we are serving as a clearinghouse for information, which was one of our primary aims. In letters I get from many of my generation, it is clear we have touched a chord of memory. They tell of their recollections of the clear streams and the open fields and the changing colors of times gone by.