Meet Nora Wildberg | Plant Records Manager, Mt. Cuba Center

With a background in art history and archaeology, Nora Wildberg brings a distinctly creative lens to plant records. From learning plant names during an internship to finding joy in the fine details of grasses, mosses, and towering trees, Nora’s story reflects how careful observation can transform the way we see the living world. Outside the garden, that creativity continues to flourish through intaglio printmaking, where birds and plants reappear as loose, expressive forms etched into copper.

Read on to learn more about the tools, books, and moments that continue to shape Nora’s journey.

What is the plant or horticulture event that started it all for you?
I took a circuitous route to horticulture. As a child, I spent a lot of time playing outside and have such fond memories climbing trees, playing in the neighborhood creek, and observing the plants and animals around me. I studied art history and archaeology in college and was first introduced to horticulture and plant records through an internship at Morris Arboretum & Gardens. Through inventory, data entry, and label-making, I began learning the names of the plants I remember growing up around, understanding how they grow and what they look like year-round.

Of course, I also discovered plants I had never seen or noticed before. One of my favorite and most inspiring internship moments was spending a day identifying grasses with Dr. Tim Block and the Plant Science team. We examined inflorescences, peeled apart spikelets, and struggled through dichotomous keys. Learning plant names was really the catalyst to a new way of seeing and understanding the world around me. I feel that the plant world offers infinite opportunities for observation, from staring up a towering Metasequoia glyptostroboides to examining the plant cells in a sliver of moss!

What IrisBG report do you find most useful? 
I use the item inventory report most frequently, and I love being able to customize the fields to generate the data exactly how I need it. I use it almost every day!

What have you found as the most handy IrisBG function to use?
Two small functions that are so useful to me are both in the item management section. Firstly, I really appreciate having the option to "correct" instead of "update" item records, which we use to change our label statuses without editing anything else in the record. Second, I love the recent addition of getting to append item comments instead of replacing them.

Which garden/ nursery tool or aid could you not live without?
I always find myself wishing I had many more hands when I’m out inventory, mapping, or relabeling in the garden… and one of the most helpful tools to me, honestly, is any kind of clothing with lots of pockets. I love the Carhartt carpenter pants because the side utility pockets are great for holding pigtail stakes and small flags, in addition to keeping accession tags organized. Another helpful thing for inventories has been a pack of multicolor 0.3mm pens, very useful when needing to add tiny (yet legible) color-coded notes in printed spreadsheets.

What is one thing that most people wouldn't guess about you? 
Over the last few years, I have gotten really into intaglio printmaking on copper. It’s a bit of an involved process with preparing a sheet of copper, engraving into its surface, and then etching the plate by dunking it in ferric chloride. I never get tired of the last few steps of inking the plate up and running it through the printing press. 

I tend to take a lot of inspiration from birds and plants, and I love incorporating them into my prints. The prints I make of plants are certainly not botanically accurate, just loose renderings of things I find beautiful!

Do you have a book or podcast that you would like to recommend? It’s hard to pick just one thing! One of the first nature-related recommendations that comes to mind is Mary Oliver’s poetry. Her writing is so piercing and deeply grounded in her observations and appreciation of nature. I particularly love the works, Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, and Devotions. 

Another recommendation is anything by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I recently read Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, which are full of important lessons we can learn from plants. Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian and How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler are part-memoir, part-science-writing—enjoyable, thought-provoking reads exploring queer ecology and ecocriticism. And lastly, not a book, but I enjoy reading Rebecca McMackin's monthly blog, Grow Like Wild!, which she sends out via email and posts on her Substack.