J. Blaine Bonham, Jr.
As executive vice president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, J. Blaine Bonham Jr. founded the PHS urban greening program Philadelphia Green in 1974 and grew the grassroots initiative into the most comprehensive program of its kind in the nation. Philadelphia Green created the Green City Strategy, a vacant land management program that converted millions of square feet of derelict land in Philadelphia to green space. Bonham has presented the program to Congress and the White House, and in 2006, he collaborated with the producers of the acclaimed PBS documentary Edens Lost & Found on the Philadelphia episode, which prominently features PHS’s greening work.
After Bonham retired from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in 2010 he received the prestigious Curtin Winsor Award. He has served on the mayor of Philadelphia’s Sustainability Advisory Board, which oversees implementation of Greenworks Philadelphia, the city’s sustainability plan. In addition, he has chaired the boards of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s GreenSpace Alliance and the Norris Square Neighborhood Project, an environmental education organization serving the Latino community in North Philadelphia.