ANDREW BUNTING

Helping build a better city through public horticulture

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ANDREW BUNTING has perhaps the most comprehensive resume in horticulture. He interned at the Morton Arboretum, the Chicago Botanic Garden, Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden and Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College. Following those, he worked for Penelope Hobhouse and Gordon Collier in Britain and New Zealand. Returning to the U.S., he had a stint at Chanticleer before returning to the Scott Arboretum, where he worked for 27 years and developed its American Public Garden Association-recognized collections of Magnolia, Quercus and Ilex.

Bunting has joined many international plant-collecting trips, including journeys with Dan Hinkley, Scott McMahan and Ozzie Johnson. In 2015, he took a job at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where he restarted the Plant Collecting Collaborative, an international group of public gardens engaged in exploration and cultivation of wild-collected species. Next, he served a stint at the Atlanta Botanical Garden before coming back to Philadelphia, where he is now Vice President of Horticulture at the highly respected Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS). Andrew has visited more than 70 countries and has made countless friendships with many of the world's most prominent horticulturists.

SCOTT BEUERLEIN: Where did you grow up and what triggered your deep interest in horticulture?

ANDREW BUNTING: I lived in Northern California between the ages of three and twelve. During that time, my mother had both a vegetable and flower garden. I remember being in the garden with her. During many of the summers, we would drive our VW popup camper to my grandparents' farm in southeastern Nebraska. My grandfather grew many crops, which always interested me—corn, milo, winter wheat and alfalfa—and they also had a large and extensive vegetable garden.