This photo essay serves as a reminder that our association with GCA extends far beyond our garden club and all the way around the world! The GCA distributed almost $460,000 in scholarships in fiscal year 2024 and $402,000 in 2023
GCA Scholar Eric Schwartz spent time in Nebraska, an area ravaged by the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s. Eric, a 2024 Moore Family Fellow in the Making of the American Landscape, was there to study the New Deal-era Prairie States Forestry Project, which planted 200 millions trees in an effort to restore and improve the devastated land.
While in the state, Eric spent time with researchers from the University of Nebraska’s Cedar Point Biological Station who band and monitor owls in Nebraska’s Sandhills. The Sandhills are the largest sand dune formations in the Western Hemisphere plus one of the largest grass-stabilized dune regions in the world. Owl boxes have long been placed on the many windmills which dot the area. The following photographs, impactfully rendered in black and white, capture scenes from this endeavor.
This photoessay has been supported the Garden Club of America’s Moore Family Fellowship in the Making of the American Landscape and an Artist Residency at the Cedar Point Biological Station, summer 2024. Special thanks to John Delong, Allison Johnson and Emily Rau.