C RY D E R
P O I N T
AUGUST 12
Queens Botanical Garden
director celebrates 25 years
BY JACOB KAYE
jkaye@qns.com
@QNS
For a few weeks in 1994, Susan Lacerte would drive
home from work, cry and ask her husband a question.
“I’d first go through the door and I’d burst into tears and
say, ‘Archie, why did I ever say yes to this?’” Lacerte said.
She had just taken a job as the executive director of
the failing Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing at the
age of 38.
Twenty-five years later, Lacerte, who remains the executive
director, has transformed the Queens Botanical
Garden into one of the borough’s top cultural landmarks.
The garden, which hosts about 250,000 visitors
per year, has become home to a broad range of programing
and partnerships, a leading example in environmentally
friendly design, and a singular, focused vision: to be
the place where people, plants and culture meet.
“To see that the work we’re doing here, what other gardens
are doing and to see how it’s gone out into the world
– it’s just wonderful,” Lacerte said.
Before Lacerte took the lead, there was little in the
garden to be celebrated. No programming, dilapidated
grounds and a poor – and, in some cases, non-existent –
reputation, made Lacerte’s early days in the job daunting.
“It was a very challenging time,” Lacerte said. “People
didn’t want to be on the board. There had been a lot of
negative press just prior. The garden looked horrible.”
There wasn’t much expected of her — or anyone — at
the time, she said. A member of the search committee
to fill the executive director’s seat told Lacerte that if she
failed or decided to quit, no one would see it as an individual
failure. The garden was such a mess already.
The garden only had one public event a year: an Arbor
Day celebration for kids.
“There were no other public events,” Lacerte said. “And
so, it was just really pulling this place up by the bootstraps.”
While the young director decided to make cleaning up
the garden the first step toward positive growth, she also
knew they would need to have a public event.
It hadn’t been long since Saul Weprin, the former
speaker of the New York State Assembly, had died and so
Lacerte decided to plan an event to honor the late Queens
leader, centered around a tree dedication ceremony.
The event was a success and a turning point for Lacerte
and the garden.
“A lot of Council members, Assembly members, a lot of
people came here,” Lacerte said. “I saw that people cared.
And that really helped me understand that there’s a lot of
community involvement here and it’ll be okay.”
As the years went on, Lacerte continued to make the
garden more and more public. And as such, she began to
focus on what makes Queens special: its diversity.
“We came up with this idea to the place where people,
plants and culture meet,” Lacerte said. “And it made
sense for Queens.”
The Queens Botanical Garden began projects centered
around that idea. One project focused on collecting the
10 most important plants from the Chinese, Hispanic and
Korean communities.
As time passed, Lacerte said, the garden became a place
built for and informed by the community.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the garden’s
visitor and administrative building, a project spearheaded
by Lacerte.
12 CRYDER POINT COURIER | AUGUST 2019 | WWW.QUEENSCOURIER.COM
Photo: Jacob Kaye/QNS
The building, with its three working roofs, is both
emblematic of the garden’s mission and good for the environment,
of course.
The building, with its giant canopy that looks like a tree
itself, uses geothermal technology, solar panels and composting
toilets.
“When I was growing up and camping, I used to use
these latrines and things like that,” Lacerte said. “I just
said, ‘I want a composting toilet in this building.’ So, the
first fully permitted composting toilet in New York City
is right here.”
On a recent afternoon in July, Lacerte took a walk
through her garden — and through her accomplishments.
Ketan Modi, a frequent patron of the garden, was showing
his son around. Lacerte and Modi chatted for a while.
The Queens Botanical Garden was one of the first places
Modi visited when he immigrated to the U.S. and he
hasn’t stopped coming by.
He visits about 30 times a year and now hopes that his
son will do the same.
It was a particularly hot day, but people were out and
using the garden. Some sat alone on benches, reading or
taking a breather. Two women dressed as fairies, with
wings on their backs and glitter on their faces, took photos
of each other in front of a patch of flowers. Earlier
that morning, a group had come to the park to practice
tai chi.
People, plants and culture were meeting throughout the
garden, just as Lacerte had intended.
“I took a picture a couple of weeks ago, sent it to my
kids and said, ‘My everyday existence in New York City,’”
Lacerte said, looking around. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
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