Patrick McMillan

Clemson, SC

Patrick McMillan is a well-known fixture in the horticultural, taxonomic and conservation circles. For over 30 years, he has worked as a professional botanist, horticulturist, naturalist, biologist, and educator. His explorations of the globe have added hundreds of new species and cultivars to the horticultural world. His transformation of the South Carolina Botanical Garden including the development of the natural heritage garden exhibits were formative in the development of the gardening style he has coined as “natural community gardening.” His horticultural research interests lie in the maintenance and generation of diversity using our managed landscapes and the conservation of rare species both in their native habitats and in gardens. He has also worked extensively in the introduction and evaluation of plants from the Chihuahuan desert ecoregion as landscape plants in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. His range of experience has concentrated on botany, though he is also well-respected through his work in ichthyology, herpetology and mammalogy. Patrick is perhaps best known as the Emmy Award-winning host, co-creator and writer of the popular ETV nature program Expeditions with Patrick McMillan. 

Patrick was a faculty member at Clemson University from 2001-2020 where he was the Glenn and Heather Hilliard Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Clemson University, was the director of the South Carolina Botanical Garden, the Bob Campbell Geology Museum and the Clemson Experimental Forest and is an honorary member of the Clemson University Class of 1939. As an expert speaker, he is in demand throughout the Southeast and nation and routinely gives more than 100 public presentations annually. He is well-known for his passionate and lively presentation style.

Patrick’s intense interest in natural history began at a very young age. He attributes his memorization of thousands of scientific names to his grandmother, who would read him Animal Kingdom and wildflower books as a young child, including the Latin names—quite a contrast to Dr. Seuss! He spent his early childhood in south Florida where he spent his time wandering the Fakahatchee Strand and Big Cypress Swamp with his father and grandfather. Patrick and his family moved to Alleghany County, North Carolina, in 1976, where he lived a few hundred feet off the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 231. Every day was spent familiarizing himself with the rhythm and diversity of his neighborhood woods, fields, and streams as well as working with his grandmother in her extensive garden which contained more than 2000 taxa. By the time he entered the University of North Carolina, his explorations had already documented plants formerly unknown in North Carolina.

During and after college, Patrick worked as an environmental consultant and field ecologist for UNC-Chapel Hill, Fairchild Tropical Gardens, KCI Technologies and R.J. Goldstein & Associates, curator at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences and eighth grade math and science teacher. He moved to and joined the faculty of Clemson University in 2001, moved to Kingston Washington to direct the world-renowned Heronswood Garden in 2020 but returned to North Carolina in 2022 to work in what he describes as the most interesting collection of plants and people in the world – Juniper Level Botanic Garden, and is currently serving as an Adjunct Horticultural Consultant. His research has taken him around the world in pursuit of new species of plants, and his areas of expertise are in sedge and Begonia taxonomy, natural community ecology and conservation biology.