William A. McNamara is an American horticulturist and expert in the field of plant conservation and the flora of Asia. Now retired, he was the President and Executive Director of

Quarryhill Botanical Garden Sonoma Botanical Garden (formerly Quarryhill Botanical Garden) is a 501(c)3 private nonprofit education and research botanical garden, home to one of the largest collections of scientifically documented, wild-source Asian plants in North America ...

, a 25-acre wild

woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shrub ...

in Northern California's Sonoma Valley featuring wild-sourced plants from temperate East Asia. In 2017, he and Quarryhill Botanical Garden celebrated their 30th Anniversary. He retired from the Garden in October of 2019.

Early life and education

McNamara was born in 1950 in Logansport, Indiana, moved to Palo Alto, California when he was 11, and graduated from Palo Alto High School. During college, he worked at various nurseries in the San Francisco Bay Area and became a California Certified Nurseryman in 1973. After graduating in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in English, he traveled around the world visiting gardens and remote areas. In 1980, he settled in Sonoma, California where he started Con Mara Gardens, a landscape contracting business. McNamara received a Master of Arts in

Conservation Biology Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an int ...

from Sonoma State University in 2005. He holds a third degree black belt in Aikido and received a Mokuroku Certificate in Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu in 1997.

Career

McNamara has been a Field Associate of the Botany Department at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco since 2000. McNamara shares his horticultural knowledge through presentations throughout the country and abroad, and he has been on the

Garden Club of America The Garden Club of America is a nonprofit organization made up of around 18,000 club members and 200 local garden clubs around the United States. Founded in 1913, by Elizabeth Price Martin and Ernestine Abercrombie Goodman, it promotes the record ...

's speakers list for conservation and horticulture since 2010. He is considered a modern-day plant hunter. In the company of horticulturists from th
Royal Botanic GardensKew
Windsor Great Park, the Howick Arboretum, and others, McNamara has botanized extensively in the wilds of temperate East Asia. From 1987 to 2019, he participated in annual plant collecting expeditions to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, India, Nepal, Vietnam and

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

in search of plants for research, conservation, and stemming biodiversity loss. William McNamara at Quarryhill CHugo

Awards and honors

Named Honorary Member of The Garden Club of America, 2018 The Veitch Memorial Medal from Britain's Royal Horticultural Society, 2017 Liberty Hyde Bailey Award the

American Horticultural Society The American Horticultural Society (AHS) is a nonprofit, membership-based organization that promotes excellence in American horticulture. It is headquartered at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia. History Established in 1922, the AHS is one of t ...

, 2017 Arthur Hoyt Scott Medal,

Scott Arboretum Scott Arboretum () is an arboretum coterminous with the campus of and operated by Swarthmore College. It is open to the public daily without charge. The arboretum was established and endowed by the Scott family in 1929 in honor of Arthur Hoyt Sc ...

, 2010 National Garden Clubs Inc. Award of Excellence, 2013

California Horticultural Society California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Annual Award, 2012 The

’s Eloise Payne Luquer Meda,l 2009 Field Associate of the Department of Botany, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, 2000 Honorary Consultant of National Plateau Research Center of China, 2010 Honorary Researcher of the Scientific Information Center of Resources and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2001

Articles

* W. A. McNamara. "The Risks of Collecting" ''Pacific Horticulture'', Volume 60, Number 2, Summer 1999.'' '' * W. A. McNamara. "All in a Day’s Work" ''The American Gardener'', Volume 79, Number 4, July/August 2000. * W. A. McNamara. "Three Conifers South of the Chang" ''Pacific Horticulture'', Volume 62, Number 1, January/February/March 2001. * W. A. McNamara. "Making a Last Stand: Acer pentaphyllum"'' Pacific Horticulture'', Volume 63, Number 2, April/May/June 2002. * W. A. McNamara. "Lilies of Quarryhill" ''Lilies and Related Plants, 2003-2004''. Royal Horticultural Society. London. * W. A. McNamara. "Pennel’s bird’s-beak: Cordylanthus tenuis ssp. capillaries" ''Endangered Biodiversity Information Project.'', May 2004. * W. A. McNamara. "Emmenopterys henryi" ''Pacific Horticulture'', Volume 66, Number 2, April 2005. * W. A. McNamara. "Schima" ''Pacific Horticulture'', Volume 66, Number 3, July/August/ September 2005. * W. A. McNamara. "Conifer Heaven" ''Conifer Quarterly,'' Volume 25, Number 2, Spring 2008 * W. A. McNamara, Mark S. Roh, Deric Picton, Kaipu Yin & Qian Wang. "Assessment of genetic variation in Acer pentaphyllum based on amplified fragment length polymorphisms" ''Journal of Horticultural Science & Biotechnology'', 83 (6), 2008. * W. A. McNamara. "Magnolia grandis: a first flowering" ''The Journal of the Magnolia Society Internationa''l, Volume 44, Issue No. 86, Fall/Winter 2009. * W. A. McNamara. "Schima sinensis" ''Curtis’s Botanical Magazine'', Volume 26, Part 3, November 2009. * Mark S. Roh, W. A. McNamara, Corey Barnes, Kaipu Yin, & Qian Wang, "Genetic Variations of Acer pentaphyllum Based on AFLP Analysis, Seed Germination, and Seed Morphology." Acta Horticulturae 885, Article # 885_42, pages 305-312, 2010. * W. A. McNamara. "Endangered: Magnolia wilsonii" ''The Journal of the Magnolia Society International,'' Volume 45, Issue No. 88, Fall/Winter 2010. * W. A. McNamara. "Acer pentaphyllum" ''Curtis’s Botanical Magazine'', Volume 28, Part 2, July 2011. * W. A. McNamara. "Botanic Garden Profile: Quarryhill Botanical Garden" ''Sibbaldia: The Journal of Botanic Garden Horticulture''. No. 11. 2013. * W. A. McNamara, Nicole Cavender, Murphy Westwood, Catherine Bechtoldt, Gerard Donnelly, Sara Oldfield, Martin F Gardner, David Rae. "Strengthening the Conservation Value of ex situ Tree Collections''" Oryx''. Volume 49, Number 3, July 2015. * W. A. McNamara."Wild Roses in Asia And The Quarryhill Botanical Garden" ''The Indian Rose Annual XXXI''. 2015. * W. A. McNamara. "llicium simonsii" ''Curtis's Botanical Magazine''. Volume 33, Part 1, February 2016. * W. A. McNamara. "In Search of Wild Roses in Asia" 2016 ''American Rose Annual''. November/December 2016.

References

External links

Quarryhill Botanical Garden website
{{DEFAULTSORT:McNamara, William American horticulturists People from Logansport, Indiana People from Palo Alto, California Sonoma State University alumni Living people Veitch Memorial Medal recipients American conservationists University of California, Berkeley alumni American nonprofit executives Year of birth missing (living people)