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The need for a new Arboretum Center

Plant ID program in multipurpose room

Today the Arboretum Visitor’s Center includes one classroom that serves as an art gallery, lunchroom, boardroom, volunteer and staff workroom, children’s classroom, community meeting room, and lecture hall. Without adequate facilities, these activities compete for space, limiting the size of the audience and the number of programs that can be offered.

Programs are expanding in response to the public’s interest and demand for quality programs about ecology and native plants. Schools are also looking to the Arboretum for curriculum supplements and class trips. This increased demand for programs has created the need to expand facilities.

Additional facilities for educational programs will enable the Arboretum to reach a broader audience—children, families, amateur and professional horticulturists, natural resource managers, land planners, the nursery industry, and land developers—and to serve the region as:

• An educational center where thousands of children every year experience the natural world;
• A place for all ages to learn about land stewardship, gardening with native plants, and promoting ecological restoration in our backyards, neighborhoods, and communities;
• A community center where residents and visitors can celebrate the seasons, events, holidays, and the arts in the midst of native meadows, wetlands, and woodlands;
• A destination for the touring public to discover what makes this region’s natural heritage unique;
• A place to enjoy lady-slippers in the late spring, ancient colonies of mountain laurel in early summer, fragrant native azaleas, spring beauties carpeting the forest floor, the tulip poplar’s bloom, a pawpaw patch, and the natural succession from old field to mature hardwood forest;
• A quiet sanctuary for observing and communing with nature in all seasons; and
• An arboretum for and of our region that celebrates and protects our natural heritage.