Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

Description

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is a botanical research institution and free public park. It is the oldest public arboretum in North America, and the second largest link in the Emerald Necklace. The collection of temperate trees, shrubs, and vines has a particular emphasis on the plants of the eastern United States and eastern Asia.

Constructed, 1872

Redeveloped, 1946

Factoids

1873 -Charles Sprague Sargent officially began a 54-year term as first director of the Arnold Arboretum. Sargent soon enlisted the aid of pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted – then busy designing the Boston park system – to help him lay out the grounds. “Olmsted immediately grasped the idea that an arboretum where the public could see varied plantations of rare and exotic trees and shrubs skilfully [sic] selected, artistically arranged, and grown under scientific oversight, would not only be an appropriate feature in the park system [now known as Boston’s “Emerald Necklace”] but might well become its culminating attraction,” Benjamin Lincoln Robinson, the Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany, wrote in the late 1920s. Nonetheless, the Arboretum proved a hard sell, Robinson noted. “Neither the City [of Boston] nor the Harvard Corporation welcomed the idea. The press was indifferent, and the public apathetic. Nine years of persistent effort were required before it was possible to draft a plan of procedure acceptable both to the City and to the University and to secure its approval by the General Court of Massachusetts.”

Related People & Organizations

Harvard University

James Arnold

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