Copyright 2002 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.  
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
July 4, 2002 Thursday Five Star Lift Edition
SECTION: MADISON COUNTY POST ; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 588 words

HEADLINE: SHAW'S GARDEN CROSSES THE MISSISSIPPI;
LEADERS WANT TO EXTEND SERVICES TO ENTIRE AREA

BYLINE: Terry Hillig Of The Post-Dispatch

DATELINE: METRO EAST

BODY:
Leaders of the Missouri Botanical Garden believe the venerable St. Louis institution should serve the entire metropolitan area, not just the part that's in Missouri.

That conviction is the basis for establishing Shaw's Garden East, an initiative undertaken about two years ago with the goal of extending services and programs to the Metro East area.

Lynn Kerkemeyer is marketing officer for Shaw's Garden East, which has an office in University Park at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Kerkemeyer said Peter H. Raven, the garden's director, provided the impetus for Shaw's Garden East.

"Dr. Raven talked about this for years," Kerkemeyer said. "He has always been a tremendous proponent of regionalism."

Raven met with Ralph Korte, a longtime garden member and chairman of Korte Construction Co. of Highland and St. Louis, and those talks led to the formation of a Shaw's Garden East Advisory Council.

The council includes numerous community leaders from Madison, St. Clair and surrounding counties, including the presidents of all four institutions of higher education in the area.

While discussions began two years ago, the council's work has begun to bear fruit only in recent months. Kerkemeyer was hired last fall.

One of the first visible results of the garden's closer ties with Metro East is the garden that surrounds a new sculpture of Sacajawea, the Indian woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition, at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey. The sculpture by Glenna Goodacre and the garden were dedicated on May 14.

The college has retained landscape architects Marshall Tyler Rausch, the same firm used by the garden, to develop a campus master plan.

The council also is working closely with East St. Louis resident Mamie Boulden to expand her community garden activities.

Boulden first planted a garden on a vacant lot near her home. Now, with the help and advice of Shaw's Garden East, she's working on a community garden project.

The council also instituted "Greening the Garden Years," a program to enrich the lives of senior citizens through plant-related activities. The first partner in that program is the Eden Village retirement community in Glen Carbon, but it will soon be extended to other senior communities in the Metro East area.

The garden is actively seeking a $33 million National Science Foundation grant that would allow it to establish a "Greater St. Louis Math Science Partnership," a pilot program to improve mathematics and science education in schools in both Missouri and Illinois. Some 40 Metro East school districts - from Red Bud to North Greene - would be partnership members.

Kerkemeyer said one of the council's goals is to make Illinois residents more aware of the garden, which she said is one of the top botanical institutions in the world.

Korte and his wife have been garden members for 25 years. He said that although 25 percent of the region's people live in Illinois, they account for only about 15 percent of Shaw's Garden visitors.

Korte said the projects that have begun to sprout around the area are only the first examples of a new bistate partnership.

He said other St. Louis area cultural institutions want to develop closer ties with Illinois "but Peter Raven is the one who decided to go ahead and do it."

"If all the cultural institutions would pull together (with Illinois people and institutions) on projects they can do jointly, it could really change the way this region interacts," Kerkemeyer said.

NOTES:
Reporter Terry Hillig:; E-mail: thillig@post-dispatch.com; Phone: 618-659-3638

GRAPHIC: PHOTO; Color photo by David Carson/Post-Dispatch - BLOSSOMING IN GODFREY; Josh Grenzebach of AAIC Architects/Engineers in Collinsville walks in front of the recently landscaped statue of Sacajawea at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey. The landscaping was done with help from the Missouri Botanical Garden.; (This color photo appeared in the Alton Area Post)

LOAD-DATE: July 5, 2002