UWRF professor part of gold medal-winning team

 

UW-River Falls professor part of gold medal-winning team at world’s most famous flower show in London 

June 15, 2026 - Often referred to as “The World Cup of Gardening,” the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show in London is considered by many to be the most prestigious flower show in the world. This year, it drew celebrities and dignitaries as distinguished as the king and queen of England. University of Wisconsin-River Falls Assistant Professor of Biology Benjamin J. Crain was right in the action as a member of a gold-medal-winning international team. 

The show includes garden, floral and educational exhibits created by teams from around the world and draws around 150,000 attendees. Crain’s team, Orchid Conservation Chelsea, had nearly 70 members representing 24 institutions spanning the U.S., the U.K., China and elsewhere.  

“There is a core of team members every year,” Crain said. “Then there are some who participate based on the geographical emphasis of our exhibit.”  

Team members represented a variety of universities, botanical gardens, conservation charities and specialist growers. 

The team’s landscape exhibit, “The Orchids of China — Beauty and Conservation,” won a gold medal, the highest honor given, aside from Best in Show. The team also won gold in 2025 with an exhibit featuring orchids of the Pacific. That exhibit was honored again this year with the Eric Young Orchid Trophy, which is presented to the exhibitor of the most meritorious group of orchids staged at any RHS show during the year. 

The team won a silver-gilt medal for a display called “The Chinese Scholar’s Study,” representing a workspace in which the Chinese philosopher Confucious might have done his writing. It included orchids that inspired him and were mentioned in his works. The team also picked up a Cultural Certificate and an Award of Merit for two specific orchid varieties they displayed. 

“We kind of knocked it out of the park this year,” Crain said. “It was incredible.”  

This was Crain’s third year with the team, which first exhibited at the show in 2023. He had become acquainted with team members while working on his Ph.D. and during his postdoctoral work at the Smithsonian’s North American Orchid Conservation Center. Crain joined UWRF in 2025, teaching botany, plant identification and introductory biology courses. 

Team members worked on everything from designing and installing the display to cultivating and procuring the orchids and even painting the walls for the backdrops. During the show, Crain and other team members spent time each day engaging directly with visitors at the team’s “Orchid Genius Bar,” discussing orchid ecology, conservation strategies and research. Crain and the team began their visit by presenting an orchid conservation symposium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a globally renowned botanical research and education institution that houses the world’s largest living plant collection. 

While orchids are Crain’s primary emphasis now, that wasn’t always the case. His main interest in college was ornithology, so he expected to work with birds. But after finishing his undergraduate program, he ended up taking a job at a botanical garden.  

"I bumped into an orchid there, a Bulbophyllum species, that was the weirdest plant I had ever seen,” Crain said. “I learned it was endangered.”  

Crain continued growing orchids at home while working on his master’s degree. Then when it was time to choose a research focus for his Ph.D., he said the choice was easy. 

“I thought ‘this is my last chance to work with orchids.’ There are very few people working with orchids in the U.S.,” he said.  

Crain earned a reputation for working with orchids around the Caribbean. After completing his Ph.D., he began working as a research associate for the North American Orchid Conservation Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., on a project called the Palau Orchid Conservation Initiative. While studying orchids in Palau, a small island chain between New Guinea and the Philippines, Crain discovered a new species of orchid. That research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Harvard Papers in Botany. Crain said he is happy he found his niche in orchids and he enjoys the opportunity to share his knowledge with others. For one thing, most people probably don’t know how common they are. 

“It is the largest plant family on Earth,” Crain said. “If you're standing somewhere, there's likely an orchid nearby. People just don't tend to recognize that because they look for the big showy stuff. Not every orchid looks like that.” 

Crain said participating in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show was an incredible experience that was about more than the glamour of the celebrities and the prestige of winning awards. 

"The ultimate goal is orchid conservation,” Crain said. “Yes, it’s about medals and judging, but the main thing is that we're able to present our research as a team to a very diverse audience and a different audience than we normally reach within our field.” 

Photo 1: UW-River Falls Biology Professor Benjamin Crain holds the gold and silver-gilt medal certificates his team won at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London. The international team, Orchid Conservation Chelsea, took home five awards from the event, which is widely regarded as the most prestigious flower show in the world.