So Much To Do, So Little Time

I'm pretty sure everyone has made or heard this lament several times in their life, if not every day. Most of us have more things we want to do than we have the time and/or resources for, both in our personal lives and at work, and this is certainly the case at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort.

Think of all the things we currently do and could yet do with this botanic garden. We want to answer all the e-mails we receive the same day we get them. I need to inventory our collections regularly and take notes on flowering and fruiting events, entering all this into our botanic garden database. Plant labels need to be made and maintained. I research new plants to add to our collections then need to make time to head up to Homestead to bring back the new specimens. We take photographs for our own records and also for social media - and then we need to manage all those social media accounts. We would love to acquire more plots of land to expand our collections. I would love to be able to offer ten different tours instead of two. I already have a 90-minute tour slot each day, but demand could certainly increase to requiring two per day. It would be great to put out a blog every week instead of once every two or three. We're working on a botanic art gallery and it would be very neat to feature interactive exhibits along with those works of art. It would be of great benefit to the community if we could bring our educational environmental programs for students to all the schools here in the Keys, not just elementary and middle school students in the Upper Keys. We would love it if our Grounds Director could spend all her time focused only on caring for the collections, but as it is, about half her time is needed for other work on the property. KKBG.ORG has come into its own as a virtual ethnobotanic garden, but I would love to to make it an even more comprehensive ethnobotanical resource. It would be valuable for us to attend more community events, devote more time to fundraising, and write at least a few grant proposals each month. It sure would be neat to host seminars and workshops on ethnobotany here with experts from around the U.S. and the world, as well as a range of other special events. It would be nice to eat lunch each day as well. And on and on and on...

Just a few of the things we do.

Now think of how much an organization with one full time staff member and three part time staff members could handle well without becoming overwhelmed. At least one part-time person is needed for daily horticultural maintenance and another part-time person is required for a basic level of administration, and all of a sudden we're already down to one full time and one part time person! Needless to say, we can't do all we would like to do. In reality, though, no organization does, even if they have 100 times the staff and resources. There will always be something more that could be done, and more is never enough.

Deciding what to focus our time on given our limitations and figuring out how to go about accomplishing those things has been a challenge for me in my role as Associate Director here at the Gardens, but one I quite enjoy because I feel it's a skill that is extremely important to develop for use in all aspects of life. So how exactly does one go about making these choices about what to do given constraints on time and resources? When it comes to the Gardens, Joe and I get together a couple times a year to comprehensively evaluate what we are doing and what we might want to do. Our mission and vision statements are crucial to this process because they allow us an objective framework from which to evaluate whether or not programs are relevant to what we want to achieve as a Garden and which relevant programs are most important. Choices on my own then need to be made regarding how to go about accomplishing these goals. With practice and an internalization of the priorities of the organization as well as consideration for deadlines, I begin to make these choices almost unconsciously. Beyond that, personal preference is important, as some people prefer to start the day with the most challenging tasks so they can coast downhill after that, whereas others prefer to start off with easier-to-accomplish tasks to get into a groove before going after the more time-consuming and challenging tasks.

To make things a little more complicated, each week is usually full of unanticipated interruptions and tasks. I've found that one of the most valuable skills to develop is a flexibility from hour-to-hour and day-to-day that allows me to maintain a sort of disjointed continuity: taking on unanticipated tasks as they arise while at the same time staying focused on the several projects of central importance that need to get done, so that when I'm able to get back to the last major project I was working on, I can pick up easily where I left off. I imagine the ideal of this skill metaphorically as a constant juggling act of tennis balls (representing major mission-oriented goals to accomplish) that incorporates other tennis balls (representing smaller unanticipated tasks) into the juggling routine whenever they come up. The tennis balls are then dropped out as they are "accomplished," all while maintaining flawless juggling of the others. When you get it right, this is basically what it feels like:

Certainly, people have juggled several more balls at one time than that, but not in such an incredibly artistic and powerful way. So, even if we can afford to have only a few tennis balls in the air at a time as a botanic garden given the staff and resources we have, we can still create an unforgettable experience for our visitors and local community. It's not how much you have, but what you do with what you've got.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Learning From Plants

There are many lessons we can learn from plants. I look for these lessons as I walk through the gardens here at Kona Kai and also when I am anywhere else plants are present. Different plants exemplify certain particular lessons more apparently than others, and I've tried to pick out some examples and photos from the Gardens here at Kona Kai:

Plants don't need much, and can do a lot with very little - just sunlight, water, air, and nutrients from the soil. It's pretty incredible what, and how much, plants can produce given only these ingredients. If I told you I could produce some delicious food, potent medicine, useful materials, and objects of beauty from just air, light, and some water and soil given enough time, you would bet that's unlikely, but it's exactly what happens if I have a seed or two in the soil I'm going to use. The chemistry behind this apparent alchemy plants utilize is incredibly complex and still manages to astound scientists today. I hope that I can be like plants and transform what sustains my body into things exponentially more useful and beautiful for the world.

A very productive papaya plant (Carica papaya) in our tropical fruit garden producing delicious fruit from simple ingredients.

Plants make good use of all their resources without much waste. When a plant acquires something, it's going to be making use of it and does not keep resources that it does not use beyond what is prudent food/water storage for its environment. Because a plant only keeps what it makes use of, remaining resources are available to other organisms, allowing them to grow and flourish along with it. I have found this to be a great way to live - keeping only what I need and use regularly and then passing on whatever I'm not using to someone else who can make use of it. In this way, other people can flourish along with me and I make as efficient use of the planet's limited resources as possible.

The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) has roots, a trunk, and leaves to take care of its needs.

Plants own nothing beyond themselves and seem quite content. Their glory is not in what they own but being what they are to the greatest potential possible in their given situation. Thoreau wrote that a poet's most challenging work is his/her own life, which also has the potential to be the greatest work of poetry they can possibly produce. If I put more effort and energy into developing myself as a better human being instead of into acquiring and accumulating things, perhaps I can write a living poem as beautiful as the ones I see being written by the plants in our gardens.

The intricate and delicate beauty of plants is poetry more eloquent than verse.

Plants are not striving to be something they aren't, comparing themselves with others and envying them - the concept is quite foreign to them. They are who they are and to see a plant growing true to its own unique nature, no matter how inconspicuous or seemingly insignificant, is beautiful. In the orchid house today, I saw the tiniest orchid plant I have ever seen in my life putting out a single flower. As small as it is, the orchid could figure it counts for nothing in comparison with the great coconut and mahogany trees overshadowing the orchid house (or the much bigger and more floriferous orchids nearby) and so shrivel up and die in their shadows. But it's doing its own thing as the type of plant it is and just so happened to be the one that caught my attention over any other orchid or tree nearby. If every plant tried to be as big as a mahogany, have flowers like a hibiscus, and leaves like a palm, then the world would have lost out on the incredible beauty and usefulness found in plants' diversity. The same is true for people - I am extremely thankful that each person has different gifts and character qualities so that we can learn from and help each other to do things that we would not be able to accomplish if we were all of the same talents and character. And so I should strive to develop the good qualities and talents of my unique self and thereby contribute the most to the beauty and function of humanity.

Juuuust managing to peek over the lip of its pot. Heroic.

Plants grow and bloom where they are planted since they have no option of relocating to other places like animals and humans can. I have seen plants growing in places where conditions are extremely harsh and yet they still put out leaves and bloom, making the best of the situation they are given. These plants remind me that I too can grow and "bloom" even in the toughest situations, hardest times, and most hostile places.

Firebush (Hamelia patens) growing out of a rock!

Blooming beautifully in spite of its much-less-than-ideal situation.

Plants are patient and long-suffering without complaint. Plants are peed on, climbed on, cut up, rained on, snowed on, tossed about by strong winds, infected with disease, pushed to their limits for production, and often die a slow death. Yet even in the midst of these things, plants remain silent and serene like the silent sun, moon, stars, and clouds overhead. I find it startling just how quiet the world is without the noise we humans make with cars, machines, talking, TV, music, etc. I thrive when I take time to be silent and still in a place free from those noises. When I do this, part of me becomes one with that peacefulness and I can bring this back with me into my daily life. Plants can be powerful witnesses of serenity in the midst of chaos, as they are just as peaceful in the city as they are in the country; they seem to transcend the noise.

The red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) out across the bay from Kona Kai are a great escape via kayak into the quiet (except when people head down to Key West for the speedboat races).

Plants consume in order to produce, thereby benefitting many other organisms, especially humans. I think of the many ways plants benefit me - fruits for food and spice, leaves for shade, roots for medicine, trunks for materials and energy, flowers for fragrance and beauty, etc. Given the food I eat and water I drink, I too can be a producer and provide for the well-being of the other organisms on this planet (humans, plants, and animals). I hope to be a consumer who consumes in order to produce for the benefit of the wider world, not a consumer who consumes in order to consume more for myself.

The pineapple (Ananas x) is a symbol of generosity, and it is certainly generous using so many of its resources to produce such large and tasty fruits.

If you have any lessons you've learned from plants, feel free to share in a comment!


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director