Executive Director
csclar@publicgardens.org
Casey is the Executive Director of the American Public Gardens Association. Their team connects, protects, and champions over 600 gardens and 9300 members located throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico, and 24 other countries. These gardens reach over 121 million visitors per year, continually envisioning “a world where public gardens are indispensable”. Casey’s work experience in horticulture and plant science spans three decades.
Prior to Association service, he spent 15 years at Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA) directing integrated pest management, soils and composting, land stewardship, and other sustainability programs. He holds a B.S. degree in horticulture from Cal Poly State Univ., San Luis Obispo, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in entomology from Colorado State University, and received the Association’s Professional Citation in 2011 for outstanding achievements in public horticulture.
Casey’s service promotes gardens, plants, and pollinators coupled with outreach directed at awareness of threats such as invasive species. He is the Inaugural Chair of NICH – the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture – which raises overall awareness of the $196B/yr. end-use horticulture industry, serves on the Board of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and sits on the Advisory Council for Seed Your Future to help ever more leaders pursue horticulture and the plant sciences as a career.
