The Brooklyn Botanic Garden last week announced the appointment of its new president and chief executive officer, Scot Medbury. Mr. Medbury, in return, is celebrating by leaving the country.

Fluent in Russian, the subject in which he earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington, Mr. Medbury, 46, is flying to Moscow to research urban vegetation with one of his former professors from Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in the department of landscape architecture and environmental planning.

He spoke to The New York Sun via cell phone from an airport in San Francisco, excitedly describing his favorite plant — ohia lehua, an endangered red flowered tree from his native Hawaii — and how he hopes to continue to strengthen the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s community outreach program when he takes the helm in October.

“One of the primary responsibilities, when you’ve got one of these more mature botanical gardens, is to be a steward of the fine work that has come before you,” Mr. Medbury, who is leaving his job at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers and the botanical garden at an arboretum in Golden Gate Park, said. “They are connecting people with planes. They are getting New Yorkers, especially children, into the environment and caring about conservation issues.”

As examples of the garden’s influence on the community, he pointed to Brooklyn’s greenest block competition and the opening of a new high school, the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment, which makes green issues a focus of its curriculum. “Making yourself relevant in your community — that is something that requires eternal vigil,” Mr. Medbury said.

Mr. Medbury suspects that growing up in Hawaii — where plants are an integral part of the culture and leis flower on every neck — cultivated his interest in flora. “It’s sort of the endangered species capital of the United States,” he said, adding that he has always aspired to a career in botany. “I was kind of a weird kid in that regard. I’ve been interested in plants all along. If you’ve got the plant gene, you really can’t do anything else,” he said.

Among other jobs in Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Medbury served as a gardener at the Royal Gardens of Windsor when he was 23. His future residence in Brooklyn, whose exact locale is as yet undetermined, will be a far cry from those manicured grounds, but he said it will be a pleasure to live in the borough nonetheless. “I’d love to be within walking distance of the garden,” he said. “I wouldn’t think of anything else.”