The Technical Category award was presented to:

A Tropical Garden Flora: Plants Cultivated in the Hawaiian Islands and Other Tropical Places
by George W. Staples and Derral R. Herbst,
Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, HI, 2005
ISBN 1-58178-039-7
936 pages; hardcover; 12.3 x 9.4 x 2.2 inches; line drawings
($59.95 US)

June 18, 2007 -- Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (Trinity University Press, 2006), by Kenneth Helphand, and A Tropical Garden Flora: Plants Cultivated in the Hawaiian Islands and Other Tropical Places (Bishop Museum Press, 2005), by George W. Staples and Derral R. Herbst, have won the 2007 Annual Literature Awards from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

The awards honor both the author and the publisher of works that make a significant contribution to the literature of botany and horticulture. This year’s awards were announced June 5 at The Mercantile Library in Cincinnati, Ohio, during CBHL’s annual meeting, hosted by the Lloyd Library and Museum.

Kenneth Helphand’s Defiant Gardens was the winner in CBHL’s general interest category. “Helphand, a landscape architect and historian, reconstructs vanished wartime gardens (in World War I trenches, ghettos in Nazi-controlled Europe, prisoner-of-war camps, and Japanese American internment camps) through first-person accounts, testimonies, interviews with survivors, published memoirs, and photographs unearthed in little-known archives.” He examines “how life, home, work, hope, and beauty were experienced in the creation of all of these gardens.” (Patricia Jonas, Director of Library Services, Brooklyn Botanic Garden).

A Tropical Garden Flora, by George W. Staples and Derral R. Herbst, assisted by Clyde T. Imalda, Katie Anderson and collaborators, with botanical illustrations by Anna Stone, won CBHL’s award in the technical category. It is a comprehensive, illustrated reference to more than 2,100 species of tropical and subtropical ferns, gymnosperms, monocots, and dicots, and includes taxonomic, economic, and design information. A successor to Marie C. Neal’s In Gardens of Hawaii (1948, rev. 1965), A Tropical Garden Flora reflects the spirit of that work yet also has “evolved into a much different and expanded publication” that is “both accessible and affordable.“ (Charlotte Tancin, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University).

Trinity University Press publishes books that make a lasting contribution to culture, scholarship, and knowledge, including titles that explore how the land affects people and how they, in turn, shape the places they inhabit.

Bishop Museum Press is Hawaii’s oldest book publisher and one of the first scholarly publishers in the western hemisphere, focusing on titles that expand understanding and appreciation of Hawaii's rich cultural and natural history.

CBHL is the leading professional organization in the field of botanical and horticultural information services. It recognizes the crucial importance of collecting, preserving, and making accessible the accumulated knowledge about plants for present and future generations. For more information, visit http://www.cbhl.net.