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L E H A V R E
N E W S
A U G U S T 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
14 LEHAVRE COURIER | AUGUST 2019 | WWW.QNS.COM
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.
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.’
Photo: Jacob Kaye/QNS
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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