Chebacco Author Program: Anne Kozak
The Wild Gardens of Acadia: A Unique Teacher for Cultivating Native Plants
The 2024 issue of Chebacco explores how summer and year-round residents have changed Mount Desert Island through initiatives that broaden and enhance living and visiting here. The Wild Gardens of Acadia, located at Sieur de Monts Springs, is one such initiative. In 1961 with the park’s blessing, a group of predominantly women transformed a three-quarter acre site into twelve habitats or plant communities, each showcasing native plants found in a similar habitat in Acadia. Today the Gardens display over 400 native plants, all of which are labeled. On a nice day in summer and early fall as many as 800 people visit the Gardens each day.
In her Chebacco article, Anne Kozak, a volunteer since 1972, recounts the history of the Gardens—Gardens that are maintained primarily by volunteers along with a summer intern and Geneva Langley, the supervisory gardener. In visiting the Gardens, park visitors not only learn to identify the plants they find while hiking or biking in Acadia but also how they can plant natives in their home gardens—plants that help to protect the environment and sustain wildlife.
On June 13 at 7 p.m. at Jesup Memorial Library, Kozak will present slides tracing the development of the Gardens as well as highlights from the last 63 years.
This program is a collaboration between the Jesup Library and the MDI Historical Society.
Biography:
In June 2022, after forty-five years, Anne retired as a faculty member and director of College of the Atlantic’s writing program. Her greatest accomplishment, she feels, was developing the Writing Center where trained peer tutors assist other students with a range of writing assignments. On her retirement, the college renamed it the Anne Kozak Center for Excellence in Writing. For many years, Anne covered Bar Harbor and Mount Desert as well as Acadia National Park for the Bar Harbor Times and Mount Desert Islander. In 2016, she and Susan Leiter published The Wild Gardens of Acadia, and Images of America: Acadia National Park was published in 2023. In that year, not only did Friends of Acadia honor Anne with the Acadia Inspiration award, but she was also named a Steward of History by the Bar Harbor Historical Society.