Member-at-Large

Friends of the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden Board member Glenys Kaye has travelled the world since age 19, and she still has a touch of the beguiling New Zealand accent. She has lived in the United States since 1969, with a career as a Certified Public Accountant, specializing in individual and estate taxes. Now retired, she still travels globally with her husband.

Gardening began for Glenys as a child in New Zealand, where she was born and raised. Her parents were great gardeners of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. When Glenys was old enough, she had her own garden plot and grew sweet peas and other flowers — fragrant sweet peas are her favorite, and she still grows them.

Gardening provides Glenys a happy place. She feeds her husband and friends from her garden, using the produce she grows, not wanting to waste what she nurtured. Spring is her favorite time of year. She has over a thousand daffodils that burst into bloom each year, and every year she plants about 600 tulips and other spring bulbs.

She loves the evolving show of spring flowers — bulbs, then iris and roses, and later lilies and gladioli. This gets Glenys into June or later. Her husband laughs because as soon as they return from a trip, she drops her suitcase, and immediately goes outside to check on her garden before even thinking of unpacking. 

Glenys has not formally studied gardening but has learned a lot from her childhood until now. Her next gardening job is selecting appropriate plants for a Japanese garden on the side of her house.

In addition to serving on the Friends Board of Directors for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, Glenys serves as a Trustee and Advisor to the UC Davis Foundation. She and her husband fund the “Glenys and James Kaye Scholarship” for medical students in the UC Davis School of Medicine’s ACE program, and they were founding donors of the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.