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PETER AND THE WOLF

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"Look at that -- isn't that beautiful?" Raven veers the golf cart to the side of the Garden path. "Snakeshead, I think it's called." He peers closer. "Oh! It's not what I thought at all." The air's heavy with challenged ego. Aha, you're thinking, he's goofed -- how will he handle it?

Turns out the sign's wrong -- that, or the plants have slyly rearranged themselves. Raven's out of the golf cart in a flash, double-checking, and there's an edge to his voice he might not lighten when he chastises whoever's responsible. Fallible humans, driven to keep up with a Nature that, however formally they choreograph it, keeps dancing wildly.

The director's displeasure dissipates. "Hi!" he calls cheerily to a mother and daughter looking for the Nanjing Friendship Garden. "Don't worry, I won't run you over!" He steers around the Bank of America Family Vegetable Garden and heads toward the scented garden for the blind, reciting a spontaneous litany of which donor gave which lantern, which sculpture, which bench.

He made this tour for the first time back in 1971 as the hotshot new 36-year-old director chosen to shake things up. Before him lay a staid scape indeed, dotted with lily pools, a rose garden, some venerable herbs and Bucky Fuller's geodesic Climatron. "Nobody ever planned it as The Garden," explains Raven. "I didn't understand the history at that time, but I did think there ought to be more different kinds of things here for people to enjoy." He hired experts and inked a master plan, choosing course carefully.

"Plants are becoming extinct so fast, I could've said we ought to spend all the money we can get our hands on to do research," he confides. "But I just intuitively knew that the Garden was a St. Louis institution and could only do things in a big way if it had the support of the people in St. Louis."

So he won it, carving 14 flat acres into the rolling, harmonious Japanese Garden whose secretive vistas soon became world-famous; reorienting the Garden entrance with a gleaming, commodious new visitors' center; hosting classes and festivals for everything from Kwanzaa to Hanukkah. Along the way, he brought the Garden's endowment up to $60 million; the membership to nearly 35,000; the staff to 367; the annual budget to $21.2 million (with $6.1 million coming from local property taxes).

Now the master plan's essentially finished, awaiting only an $8.5 million Desert House. Raven, who needs about four hours' sleep a night and has myriad interests but no hobbies save his work, swears he won't get bored; gardens change constantly. Still, you can feel the center of gravity shifting outward, to the serious global issues that tempted him from the start.

He parks near the newly emerging Strassenfest Garden (ignoring the workmen hand-digging a trench beneath a hackberry tree, cursing because he won't let them use power tools). Raven's heading for a special staff meeting; the Garden's been invited to take the lead in establishing a research center in the Caribbean, and he's all for it. "Botanical enterprises there are starved for money," he reminds staff members, "yet 60 percent of the plants are found nowhere else. A center with faculty, making small grants throughout the region ... it could make all the difference. I look at it as a responsibility."

A born risk-taker, he's careful but not cautious, simply suggesting they "keep the institutional focus narrow for now," get the right partners, set it up to become self-sufficient. The group brainstorms -- or, rather, Raven does, mentally thumbing his Rolodex. "Off the top of my head, I would say the Field Museum. They're Midwestern, our collaborations with them have been sweet, and you'd instantly get a lot of depth in anthropology and zoology.... I'd send an e-mail to the director, who's at Kew right now, and ask who to talk to. Then the Zoo -- that's logical; the Wildlife Conservation Society; World Wildlife Fund; Nature Conservancy. Ask what foundations have been active in the Caribbean. And get marine people, someone who works on coral reefs. The top person at the National Science Foundation who's relevant. National Institutes of Health could well be a participant, for tropical medicines...."

His staff look dizzy. The same look returns the next day on the face of his marketing director, when Raven rattles off a detailed plan to hire someone to canvass the East Side, "find out where the natural alliances are and what cultural institutions we could collaborate with." Smiling wanly, she adds it to a lengthy to-do list. "Bueno, bueno," Raven says heartily.

He's working steadily to raise the Garden's notoriously low pay -- but that's not the only reason for the turnover.

Tuesday's managers' meeting is held so early, the Garden's sprinklers cross each other like searchlights in the morning mist. Education director Larry DeBuhr quietly reports that he's leaving for Capetown, South Africa, to develop an exchange program with their botanical garden. "I can't say more; I'm not sure about the details yet."

"I can, because I have it completely in my imagination!" announces Raven, who proceeds to expound. Then he asks employees to write elderly benefactors and urges more programming with the Coca-Cola Foundation. "That's why I'm drinking this Diet Coke," he jokes, stroking the can. He listens with interest to the next report, hands folded in his lap. "Since it's their lab and it's named for them and everything, they'd be the first place you'd look for money," he offers. "Hmmm. Great!" Another report. "I just had an idea as you were talking, Larry. With the leadership changing, it might be opportune to visit people in NSF (National Science Foundation), schmooze around, see how the programs are changing. Being there is never a mistake.

"Keith, could we hear a little report on Y2K? You know, Monsanto is in a steady state of uproar, replacing things all year." Then comes a report on the new private dining room's Italian table, marooned in customs. Raven doesn't care -- it's the next handout he pounces on. "Can't we even spell "Shoenberg' correctly in our own literature?"

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