Bill Cullina: Dreaming of Gardening

2011   In the popular gardener book The Roots of My Obsession, the former executive director of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Bill Cullina wrote:

“Yesterday it happened. 
With everything finally planted, the weeds temporarily at bay, and the garden refreshed by rains after a long dry stretch, I reached that brief apogee in the arc of the season where I could sit on the bench and just appreciate. 
It is that magic time of year between the rising cacophony of spring and the slow murmuring descent of autumn when there is stillness in my soul. 
Right now, nothing needs doing. 
It has been the most frenzied spring yet at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, where I work — a season stretching well into summer. We planted just over twenty-nine thousand plants and created four acres of new gardens. I have laid out so many plants this year that I started seeing them in my sleep — one pot after another plunked atop the freshly turned earth in endless triangles stretching off to infinity.”

In 2019, Bill Cullina was named the F. Otto Haas Executive Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Morris Arboretum. He started his new job a year ago on July 8, succeeding Paul W. Meyer, who served the Arboretum for 43 years, 28 years as executive director.