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'Green Heart' exhibit heads to Kolb
Desert Botanical Garden, plant life puts unique spin on new display

Courtesy Grand Canyon Association<br>
The ‘Grand Canyon’s Green Heart’ exhibit will open July 2 at Kolb Studio, located along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.

Courtesy Grand Canyon Association<br> The ‘Grand Canyon’s Green Heart’ exhibit will open July 2 at Kolb Studio, located along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. - The Grand Canyon's abundant plant life will be explored at a new Kolb Studio exhibit in July, thanks to the Grand Canyon Association, the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and the National Park Service. The exhibit, called "Grand Canyon's Green Heart," will open July 2, according to Helen Ranney with the Grand Canyon Association. An opening reception for the exhibit is slated for July 6 from 7-9 p.m. at Kolb studio. The reception is open to the public and will be catered by the El Tovar Hotel.

Ranney said the upcoming "Green Heart" exhibit has been in the planning stages for several years.

"It's a real mission-based exhibit, because it's supporting the park's vegetation program," Ranney said. "This exhibit focuses on the diverse plants of Grand Canyon National Park. There's more than 1.2 million acres," Ranney said. "What we've done with this exhibit is we've incorporated some illustrations from some artists with the Desert Botanical Garden, we've included herbariums, a sample of a plant, so it's a three-dimensional exhibit too. Wendy Hodgson from the Desert Botanical is curating a century plant that has bloomed, so she's drying it and it's going to be there. This huge century plant is going to be there at Kolb Studio for all the visitors to see. You know that if you stand on the rim, that some people don't realize that the Sonoran Desert is represented down in the Grand Canyon and that these century plants are there, and there are cactus, and all of these other beautiful plants. What we're doing is we're allowing the visitor, without taking a step down into the Canyon, to see some of the different plant species and to get a better understanding of how special a place Grand Canyon is overall."

The program will cover the forest, desert and other aspects of the Grand Canyon in its varied elevation changes.

"We talk about some of the botanists who helped focus the attention on the diversity and started doing some of the collections," Ranney said.

The exhibit will also focus on a number of resource management projects at the Canyon and the work that goes into preserving plants within the park.

"There is a nursery at Grand Canyon," Ranney said. "The museum collection does have some herbariums too."

Ranney said the upcoming exhibit is a way to help support the various programs in the park. She added that, to her knowledge, the exhibit is the first offered by the association when it comes to the Grand Canyon's plant life.

"It's got illustrations from these Desert Botanical Garden artists, it has photography by Gary Ladd, primarily Gary Ladd, and also there are some other photographers and also some NPS (National Park Service) photographs. It's going to be a very interesting exhibit," Ranney said.

Ranney said the exhibit would be on display until Aug. 31.

"That's really not a long time for an exhibit, because we have to take it down to get ready for the Celebration of Art. When the Celebration of Art comes down, we're going to put Grand Canyon's Green Heart back up. It will go back up in early December and hang to the middle of February," Ranney said.

Plans are also in the works to make the exhibit a traveling one, Ranney said.

"What that means is maybe taking it to other venues around the state who are interested in having either all or some of it on display," Ranney said. "There are some beautiful panels that have been designed that tell the story of the different components of the vegetation program."

She said she hoped locals and visitors would come out to view the exhibit.

"It's a pretty unique location, the Grand Canyon. We have the rocks, we have the history, we have the wildlife, we have those trails, but we also have plants," Ranney said. "Grand Canyon's a pretty spectacular place."


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