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What Adkins Arboretum Offers Visitors

Through its educational and science-based approach to land stewardship, the Arboretum promotes appreciation and conservation of native plants to over 16,000 visitors annually. The Arboretum strives to reach a broad audience – children, families, amateur and professional horticulturists, natural resource managers, land planners, the nursery industry, and land developers – through guided walks, lectures, demonstrations, adult programs, children’s programs, plant sales, art exhibitions, and seasonal community events.

Annual events include:

• Art Exhibitions
• Candlelight Caroling Walk
• Fall and Spring Plant Sales
• Fall Open House
• Halloween Haunted Hayride
• Holiday Greens Sale
• Soup 'n Walks
• Spring Garden Symposium

The Arboretum is unique because it is the only arboretum or public garden in the region that focuses solely on plants native to the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Because of its location on the Delmarva Peninsula of Maryland, at the junction of the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, northern and southern plant life overlap here. The result is diverse habitats of more than 600 species of native shrubs, trees, wildflowers, grasses and ferns. By walking the Arboretum grounds, visitors can experience native plants in a natural setting, as well as in ecological restoration projects and in cultivated gardens. The Arboretum is a model for land stewardship, playing an important role in protecting the health of the Chesapeake Bay by preserving and restoring the native flora of the region.

To explore the Arboretum, visitors can choose:

• Self-Guided Walks on four miles of paths through a variety of habitats.
• An audio tour with 35 stops throughout the Arboretum with each stop providing a mini-lesson about the Arboretum’s plant communities and ecology.
• Docent Guided Walks of the Arboretum’s forest and meadow paths, and native gardens.
• Group Tours arranged by appointment and tailored to a group’s interests and age levels.
• Adkins Arboretum on the Road presentations by docents to civic organization.