The new director of the National Arboretum has suspended but not cancelled plans to remove the Glenn Dale Azalea Hillside, the National Boxwood Collection and the Perennial Gardens. The new funding is about half of what they say they need to keep things the way they are.

Recent communications from the arboretum say that many plants are still in jeopardy. Apparently the people that made the bad decision in the first place want to keep face by removing plants which don't have labels. The fallacy in that is that these plants have been documented for about 80 years with plot maps and volunteers are actively using these maps to verify the identity of these plants.

Some are very valuable plants such as the striking bi-color which was named "Ben Morrison," after the developer of the Glenn Dale Azaleas and founder of the National Arboretum, by Dr. John Creetch when he was director of the Arboretum and after Morrison had died. The interesting fact is that the azalea "Ben Morrison" has unknown parentage. Some of the plants that are documented are descendants of plants that were not documented. Yet they say that the descendants are documented. How do they make these useless distinctions. Today with DNA, all plants can be documented much more accurately than with questionable historical records.

Here is a link that might be useful: SaveTheAzaleas.org