At Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy, we work to protect rare and vulnerable plants by bringing them into cultivation—before they disappear.

In March 2026, our Collections Manager Silas Zoeller traveled to Chile on a seed-collecting expedition alongside colleagues from the University of Washington Botanic Garden and Heronswood. Thanks to generous donor support, this was our first post-Covid collecting trip—and the seeds have already arrived safely.

 The Chilean seeds were sown the very same day they arrived.

This is the same care that has grown our collection to include thousands of taxa, representing extraordinary diversity of plants gathered from around the world. Each one is carefully propagated, studied, and shared to ensure it continues to exist for future generations.

This year, you have the opportunity to be part of the Chile seed-collecting story by becoming a member during this spring membership drive.

Your contributions last year made this trip possible, and now the real work begins: germination, careful cultivation, and eventually adding these plants to the living collection and sharing them with botanic gardens, researchers, and home gardeners. If you are already one of our valued members, we invite you to consider increasing your donation to support this important project. Your contribution will ensure the Chilean collection thrives in the Conservancy’s care, and that existing collections are distributed, furthering our conservation mission.

FRBC Tour January 2026
Argentina and Chile

We are excited to report back about the FRBC sponsored tour to Argentina and Chile with the amazing Marcela Ferreyra in January 2026! Conservancy Founding Directors Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken and our tour manager, FRBC Board Director Cody Hinchliff, were joined by 10 intrepid FRBC members for this nearly 3-week long botanical adventure.

The wonderful and supremely knowledgeable Argentine botanist Marcela Ferreyra served as our guide again for this trip. During the first part of the trip, we visited some of Marcela's favorite places in the mountains of northern Argentine Patagonia where we focused on alpine wildflowers (including rosulate violets, one of Marcela's specialties). Then we crossed to Chile, where we headed south, exploring the incredible Valdivian forests and alpine zones of the central Chilean Andes. Along the way we visited many charming towns and destinations, and learned more about the history and culture of this unique part of the world.

Postcards from Argentina

Our photos of some of the incredible plants in bloom during our trip View these “postcard” photos as a slideshow presentation.

Also check out these FRBC newsletters for trip reports about a section of FRBC's Chile trip in 2025, written by Cody, with many more photos and botanical details about the region.

Volcanic Heritage: 2025 Andes Tour Journal Part 1

The Chilean "Experiment": 2025 Andes Tour Journal Part 2

Expeditions

Many of the world’s plants are poorly known – some are known but have never been introduced to cultivation while others remain undiscovered. We feel a great sense of urgency to explore, discover, and introduce as our planet is losing more species each year than it has since the die-off of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.

In response, the FRBC embarks on plant explorations to remote areas around the globe, specifically searching for uncommon and vulnerable species threatened by human resource exploitation or climate change. Acquiring cultivated plants from foreign countries that are not in the US, is also a focus as many of these carry provenance from expeditions while others provide key horticultural diversification.

The first Asian expedition for the FRBC in 2017 resulted in discovering a new species of Heteropolygonatum along with a heady number of first-time introductions to cultivation. Subsequently, we have made acquisition trips to the UK and explored remote areas of southern China, Northeast India, and Northwest Argentina.