Richard Hawke

Richard Hawke has been the Plant Evaluation Manager at the Chicago Botanic Garden since 1987, and is responsible for the comparative evaluation of over 1,200 taxa of herbaceous perennials, vines, shrubs and small trees, including the oversight of a 16,000 sq. ft. green roof trial. The Plant Evaluation Program is one of the largest and most diverse in the nation, and also one of the few programs in the United States that formally evaluates perennials. It received the Award for Program Excellence from the American Public Garden Association in 2008.

Richard is the author of Plant Evaluation Notes, a periodic Chicago Botanic Garden publication reporting the results of evaluation projects. He is an instructor for the School of the Chicago Botanic Garden. In 2005, Richard received the Perennial Plant Association’s Academic Award for teaching excellence. He writes for numerous horticulture publications such as Chicagoland Gardening, Fine Gardening, Perennial Plants, The American Gardener, and Nursery Management, and is a contributing editor for Fine Gardening magazine.

He has participated in international plant-collecting trips to South Korea and Siberia and is a member of American Public Garden Association, Perennial Plant Association, American Horticultural Society, and Garden Writers Association.