Million Orchid Project

My science journey began when I was a young teen, volunteering at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.

The garden hosts a variety of fun and exciting experiences, one of which is the Science Village, a small building nestled in between a garden café and an outdoor amphitheatre.

A few conference/classrooms and a basement (where the exciting Growing Beyond Earth project is based) make up the main section of the Science Village, but my favorite part was the row of labs with giant windows facing the entrance to the Science Village, where visitors could peer in and watch botanists at work. This was where I spent a lot of my volunteering hours, learning about orchid biology and DNA. It was the beginning to my vested interest in the natural world, and the landscape of a number of fond memories.

First up in the labs is the Microimaging Laboratory; although I didn't spend much time in this room, I had a soft introduction to the software and appliances used to capture such small and captivating images. The tiny lab often sees scientists coming in the door with armfuls of different plants around the garden, ready to have their structures imaged and studied later. A huge screen set up against the window to face outside displays some of the breathtaking images taken by researchers, showing off the skill of the scientists and the incredible power of the microscopes in the lab.

The middle lab was where I ultimately spent most of my time. The DNA lab, where I did my first DNA extractions, learned the process of PCR (and later, while mentoring high school interns, read the wacky autobiography of the inventor of the process), and spent countless hours working alongside real life scientists!!! While I always had a love for science and the natural world, it was moments spent in this lab that truly made me realize how much I wanted to pursue this kind of work as an adult. While my first work here was with the Million Orchid Project, I later returned to this lab to help on projects about Haitian oil palms and frangipani taxonomy.

Of course, I can't forget about the third and final lab in this row, and the one where the Million Orchid Project was based out of: the Micropropagation Lab. This was the first lab I ever worked in, having not been introduced to the DNA lab until a few months into my budding relationship with the garden. Orchids, who are notoriously troublesome to grow from seed, were mass produced in this small room, which was lined with metal racks of glass jars, each one containing thousands of orchid seedlings of different varieties. Under a sterilized laminar flow hood, researchers and volunteers would drop seed spores onto a layer of nutrient rich agarose in glass jars, and leave them sitting under grow lights until they were ready to come out. I spent a fair amount of time in this lab, and it was always fun. It felt like a laid-back version of the DNA lab; I didn't have to worry about remembering technical protocols or ruining precious samples, but I was still learning and engaged in research. The microprop lab will always hold a special place in my heart.

When I started working with the lab, the Million Orchid Project was a newly realized project with big dreams- the goal was to plant one million native orchids around urban areas in South Florida, while also bringing education about these plants and the importance of biodiversity to schools in the district. The project included the core team of orchid scientists, educators, and outreach professionals employed by the garden, plus student volunteers local schools. Students would learn to propogate seeds and about the lifecycle of orchids, how to identify various native orchids in the region, and the important relationships between the orchids and the environment around them. It grew qiuckly during my time at the garden, and it was such an awe inspiring experience to be able to watch it transform in the background of my life.