Accredited Arboretum News

The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden is one of the properties ravaged by the fire, with staff on Monday morning confirming that damage to parts of the garden is “significant.”

The gardens are closed due to the fires and staff say they are still assessing the full extent of the damage.

“Thankfully, most of the Garden’s Living Collection along with the main buildings are safe at the moment,” staff said.

The garden will remain closed for at least another week, according to staff.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is not the only cultural institution holding a fall groundbreaking.

In the case of the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens, though, it's coming a year later.

The first large-scale expansion of the Botanical Gardens in more than a century is proceeding – following numerous meetings over the past several months, including with the McKinley Parkway Homeowners Association, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the Niagara Frontier Orchid Society and at Buffalo and Lackawanna community forums.

Even on a frigid morning, when the last scarlet leaves clung to an oak tree and fallen gingko leaves blurred the pathways, a woman sat cross-legged on a stone bench in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, wrapped and rapt. I have no idea who she was or how long she’d been sitting there, but in the days since I spotted her, she has lingered in my mind as an image of serenity stolen from the screeching tumult of urban life.

We pass a Palo María tree that’s been illegally cut and hauled away (they fetch close to US $10,000) and on the drive in to the Gardens this morning Gerlowski pointed out the nascent signs of development along the road – a barbed wire fence here, a cement slab there, earth that has been carved out of the ridge of the river’s canyon for the entrance to a future house or hotel. There are legal and illegal construction projects galore.

A Cultural Landscape Foundation report lists the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland among 10 U.S. landscapes threatened by climate change.

The Foundation recently released Landslide, its annual report on the topic. Sites range from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to Death Valley Scotty Historic District.

ArbNet is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 BGCI/ArbNet Partnership Programme! This funding opportunity supports the development of international collaborations between gardens and arboreta for the purpose of exchanging skills, resources and expertise to advance tree conservation. We are excited to see what these partnerships will accomplish over the next year!

Read more...

By Mike Ryan

What began as a successful, influential Ohio politician and businessman’s 140-acre rural retreat has grown over the past century to become a nearly 2,000 acre preserve highlighting a unique array of plant life at The Dawes Arboretum in Licking County.

By Lini S. Kadaba

In the summer of 1976, when Paul W. Meyer arrived at Morris Arboretum fresh off a master’s in plant sciences, his goal was clear: Gain some experience at the “backwater” garden and move on to bigger opportunities.

A new geographic information system (GIS) device being employed at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Harold L. Lyon Arboretum allows users to locate plants on its property and view metadata gathered over 100 years.

“This new interface opens up 100 years of Lyon’s collections history right onto your laptop,” said Rakan Zahawi, Lyon Arboretum director. “It is a great tool for both researchers and avid plant enthusiasts, and we hope that it will get a lot of use.”

The lab is headed by Jessica Adinolfi, who was a GIS analyst with the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

By Lore Croghan