OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
USES
HISTORY
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
ACCESS ISSUES
USE ISSUES
SOCIAL ISSUES
PLANNING PROCESSES
TESTIMONIES

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OWNERSHIP:
Almost all of the land that comprises the Arnold Arboretum is owned by the City of Boston. Beginning in 1882, the City leased the land to Harvard University for a thousand years at a cost of one dollar each year. The City owns and maintains the roads of the Arboretum and the historic burying ground along Walter Street. The public has free access to the Arnold Arboretum during daylight hours and the City is responsible for policing the area. Tracts of land owned outright by Harvard University or the Trustees of Harvard College include the Weld/ Walter tract, which is adjacent to the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center and closed to the public, the Dana Greenhouses, the Leventritt Garden shrub and vine collection, and a parcel of land that abuts the State Laboratory.

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CONDITIONS:
The Arnold Arboretum is a 265-acre botanical garden dedicated to the growth and study of trees and shrubs. As of January 2000, the collections living in the Arnold Arboretum consisted of some 7,082 plants, each of which is meticulously recorded in a computerized database and mapping program that shows its location.

The collections at the Arnold Arboretum are among the largest and best documented collections of woody plants in the world. The core historical mission of the Arnold Arboretum is "…to increase knowledge of woody plants through research and to disseminate this knowledge through education" (website for Arnold Arboretum).

Layout:
Bussey Street divides the Arnold Arboretum into two sections. The main section is 168 acres in Jamaica Plain. The Peters Hill section is about 67 acres and in either Roslindale or Jamaica Plain, depending on how neighborhood boundaries are defined. Bussey Street, a City-owned road, is completely open to the public, while the streets within both sections of the Arboretum are general closed to the public.

Two other areas are also managed by the Arnold Arboretum. The first is known by various names, including the Bussey Brook Meadow, Blackwell Footpath, Bussey Brook urban wild, and South Street tract of the Arboretum. It lies along South Street in Jamaica Plain, adjacent to the main tract of the Arboretum. A range of agencies and local organizations have contributed to the establishment of this new urban open space, but management of the meadow area is far less intense than in other parts of the Arnold Arboretum. The land serves primarily as an impoundment area for rainwater and a pedestrian connector between the Forest Hills Station and the South Street gate to the Arboretum. The Arnold Arboretum also manages the Weld/ Walter tract, which lies along Weld and Walter Streets in Roslindale and is closed to the public.

The plantings, or the "living collections," of the Arnold Arboretum are arranged according to a 19th century evolutionary system known as the Bentham-Hooker sequence. They are grouped according to genus and family.

Bodies of water:
Bussey Brook runs east through the main tract of the Arnold Arboretum. The brook enters the Arboretum at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center, is fed by the Spring Brook within the Arboretum, crosses South Street into the Bussey Brook Meadow, and dips underground to join the Stony Brook Conduit near the Forest Hills MBTA Station.

Goldsmith Brook runs above ground along the Arborway and into the Arnold Arboretum at its main gate. Here the brook flows into a wetland area across from the Arboretum's main administrative building, dips beneath the Arborway, and disappears from sight.

There are three small ponds located in the main tract of the Arboretum between the State Laboratory and the Arborway called Faxon, Rheder, and Dawson Ponds. Other small wetland areas dot the landscape.

Entrances:
It is possible to access the Arnold Arboretum at approximately 17 places. The entrances are distributed more or less evenly around the perimeter of the Arboretum, with the exception of the eastern edge in Roslindale, where the Arboretum runs parallel to the Needham Commuter Rail. (see also Entrances to the Arnold Arboretum).

Major, gated entrances are located off of the Arborway in Jamaica Plain (two), and off of South Street (two), Bussey Street (two), Walter Street (one), Fairview Street (one). Minor entrances are located on South Street, Walter Street, South Street, and Arborough Road.

A slope of asphalt makes the Arboretum handicapped accessible at an Arborway entrance just west of the Casey Overpass near the Forest Hills MBTA Station.

Buildings: 
-- The Hunnewell Building is home to part of the Arboretum's herbarium (approximately 160,000 specimens of cultivated plants), library with 95,000 volumes, offices, conference room, large room for meetings and educational gatherings, and  museum and gift shop area.

-- All Arnold Arboretum plant materials are propagated and maintained at the Dana Greenhouses and Nursery until it is time for them to be planted on the grounds. The greenhouses and nursery are located off of Centre Street, north of Faulkner Hospital. Also in this area is the Lars Andersen Bonsai collection, which is housed in an open-air wooden building. 

-- Two vacant buildings lie within the Arnold Arboretum off Centre and South Streets. The walkway to the house on Centre Street is blocked by debris.

Parking:
There are a total of only 58 total formal spaces for the Arnold Arboretum, including about 25 at the Hunnewell building. However, along the Arborway, Arborway Street, Bussey Street, and Walter Street, there are a total of approximately 350 informal spaces.

Transit access:
Seven bus stops line the perimeter of the Arboretum, most of which are on Centre Street along the western edge of the Arboretum. Bus routes #37 and #38 run along the western side of the Arnold Arboretum. More than ten bus routes make a stop at Forest Hills Station, which accesses the Arboretum via the Blackwell Footpath. Forest Hills Station also serves the Orange Line, the Needham Branch commuter rail, and, perhaps in the future, the Arborway Green Line.

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USES:
The Arboretum receives more than 200,000 visitors each year. More than 3,000 schoolchildren from Greater Boston visit the Arboretum through the institution's field studies program, and Arboretum staff conduct teacher training in children's science education. Adult classes in botany and horticulture draw almost 2,000 participants annually, and beginning in July 2002, the Arnold Arboretum housed a landscape design and landscape design history program that was formerly a Radcliffe Seminar. Students of the program may take individual classes or work towards a certificate.

The single large-scale special event sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum for the public is called Lilac Sunday. Lilac Sunday has been a tradition at the Arnold Arboretum each May since before World War II. When Lilac Sunday was first recognized, people dressed in their Sunday finest and drove through the Arboretum in horse-drawn buggies. Today, it is not unusual to have 50,000 visitors at the park on that day - usually the second Sunday in May. Although people throughout much of Greater Boston are aware of Lilac Sunday, participation by people in some parts of Roslindale and most of Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury is minimal.

Programming run by the City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department park rangers within the Arnold Arboretum includes a one and a half hour night walk called "Sounds in the Night," an evergreen tour, and a stargazing session. The Arboretum is also included in some of the City tours of the Emerald Necklace.

Forbidden uses include off-trail biking, picnicking, and picking fruits or flowers.

Other user groups:
In addition to amateur botanists and professional academics, dog walkers and bicyclers frequently use the Arnold Arboretum. The Arnold Arboretum has more institutional users than other parks in the area, including visitors from Faulkner Hospital, the Jewish Rehabilitation Center, and the State Laboratory.

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HISTORY:
(Much of the following history is taken from Ida Hay's 1995 book, Science in the Pleasure Grounds).

Early history:
Archaeological evidence suggests that people lived on the Arnold Arboretum land between 3,000 and 7,500 years ago. Then the climate shifted and the land became swampy and uninhabitable. In the mid 1600s, British settlers began clearing and farming the land. Farmer and merchant Benjamin Bussey bought 210 acres of the land in 1807, and named his estate "Woodland Hill." The Bussey family lived on the land between 1815 and 1849 (The Landscape Explorers Student Field Journal, 1997).

Benjamin Bussey (1757-1842) and the land:
Benjamin Bussey was a wealthy merchant and gentleman farmer who bequeathed his land to Harvard College to be used for instruction in farming, horticulture, and botany. Bussey began building his farm and estate at the age of 49. He amassed his territory through a series of real estate purchases, the largest of which was a 50-acre farm that had been owned by Eleazer Weld. Bussey purchased the land now known as Peters Hill from John Davis in 1837. He also purchased pasture land from John's brother Ezra in 1833, and what is now the Walter/ Weld tract from farmer Joseph Dudley in 1810.

Benjamin Bussey practiced scientific farming and scenic improvement on his land. He imported merino sheep, ran highly productive orchards, and farmed only small areas. Bussey never entirely cleared steep, rocky land such as Hemlock Hill, which he found to be unsuitable even for pasture. He mowed his meadows, kept lush groves, and allowed and encouraged people to roam freely through his property. One former resident remembers: "During Mr. Bussey's life, and for years after, the public enjoyed the freedom of [his] charming grounds. There were lovely wood paths, carefully kept, in all directions" (Hay, I, Science in the Pleasure Grounds, 1995).

In 1842, Bussey left Harvard University 394 acres of land for a school of agriculture and horticulture, asking that the rural aspect of his land be protected. The property went unused for 27 years, until 1869 when the university released just seven acres to build the Bussey Institution in 1871. The building, built in Gothic Revival style, was used as a headquarters for an agricultural school until 1907 and then as a graduate school. It was demolished in 1971 after being severely damaged by a fire.

James Arnold (1781-1868) and the Indenture:
Twenty-five years passed between the time Bussey bequeathed land to Harvard and money became available to develop the land as an arboretum.

In 1863, James Arnold, a whaler, land speculator, Quaker pacifist, and abolitionist from Providence, Rhode Island, left about $100,000 of his estate to three friends to be used for "the promotion of Agricultural, or Horticultural improvements, or other Philosophical, or Philanthropic purposes at their discretion" (Hay, I, Science in the Pleasure Grounds, 1995). After much discussion, the friends agreed that they should use the money to create an arboretum, but debated the best place to put it. In 1872, Arnold's friends and Harvard University agreed to locate the arboretum on the Bussey land. They appointed the young Charles S. Sargent to be curator of the new institution.

The indenture for the original 120 acres of the estate was for "the establishment and support of an Arboretum to be called the Arnold Arboretum, which shall contain, as far as is practicable, all the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air at the said West Roxbury..." The indenture also called for the establishment of an "Arnold Professor" to care for and manage the Arboretum.

Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927) and the design of the Arnold Arboretum:
Charles Sprague Sargent, the man who largely built and first directed the Arnold Arboretum, was a mediocre student and a wealthy young man from Brookline with a Harvard degree and no need of making money. Until he was named curator of the new arboretum, his had been a lackluster career. When he accepted the job, Sargent knew little about arboretums or what it took to run one. He quickly rose to the occasion, however, becoming director of the Arboretum within a year and leading the organization for 54 years.

Sargent was inconsistent in his descriptions of the land at the time the Arboretum was established. He called the land a "warn out farm, partly covered with natural plantation of native trees nearly ruined by excessive pasturage to be developed into a scientific garden with less than three thousand dollars a year available for the purpose." According to historian Ida Hay, the land did have pockets of fields, stone walls, and inaccessible areas when Sargent first became curator of the new Arboretum. However, as noted above, much of the land was also well maintained and managed. In 1872, for an article in the Gardeners Chronical, Sargent described the land under his care as "undulating and park-like ground already and finely wooded" (Hay, I. Science in the Pleasure Grounds, 1995, p130).

Plans for the development of an arboretum were beginning just as the City of Boston was drawing up plans for its park system under the direction of famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. In 1873, Sargent initiated a conversation with Olmsted about a possible partnership. Olmsted responded with great reserve, saying in a letter that "a park and an arboretum seem to be so far unlike in purpose that I do not feel sure that I could combine them satisfactorily" (8 July 1874). Sargent quickly succeeded, however, in awakening Olmsted's enthusiasm for the project.

Although both Harvard and the City of Boston initially resisted the idea of the Arnold Arboretum becoming part of the Boston parks system, Sargent and Olmsted pursued the idea together, and eventually brought it to pass. Sargent raised funds for the Arboretum on the strength of the Olmsted name and began negotiations with the City of Boston for a partnership in park creation and management.

After four years of negotiations, in 1882, the City of Boston and Harvard University signed an agreement. The original arrangement between the City and the University continues to be in effect today. The City of Boston owns the Arboretum land and agreed to lease it to the Arnold Arboretum at a cost of $1 each year for a thousand years. The City was and is responsible for road building and maintenance, water supply, and policing, while the University was and is obligated to offer the Arboretum as a free public park and to furnish the staff necessary to run it.

Construction and plantings:
Olmsted laid out the roads and grading beginning in 1883. Originally, the paths included a carriage road, bridle path, and pedestrian walkway. In 1892, Horatio Hollis Hunnewell donated funds for the construction of an herbarium, library, laboratory, and museum. In 1894, the City and the university added the Peters Hill section to the Arboretum. During its first fifty years, the Arboretum increased from 125 to 250 acres.

Sargent first brought botanical collections to the site in 1886 and arranged them as he saw fit. His goal was to gather every tree and shrub species that might be able to survive in New England and establish it in his arboretum. He made trips to gather the seeds of trees and shrubs in Japan, South American, Europe, China, Formosa, Korea, and other areas. Germinating and planting his collections, which would often take decades to reach full maturity, was particularly challenging due to the special soil and climate needs of the individual species. Sargent saw the Arboretum less as a public park than as "...a museum founded and carried on to increase the knowledge of trees" and directed "not merely as a New England museum but as a national and international institution as anxious to help a student in Tasmania or New Calcedonia as in Massachusetts."

History since the 1940s (also, see SOCIAL ISSUES: Relationship between the Arnold Arboretum and surrounding communities):
In 1946 the Harvard Corporation approved a plan to move part of the herbarium and library and part of the Arboretum staff to a new building in Cambridge. Much of the experimental and research work related to the Arboretum was transferred to Cambridge after this point. In 1989, oversight of the Arnold Arboretum within the university was transferred from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to the Office of Vice President for Administration.

Between 1997 and 2002, the institutions spent about $5 million on capital improvements to the grounds of the Arnold Arboretum. In 2002, a major addition to the Arboretum was completed: the four acre Leventritt Garden for shrubs and vines.

In July 2002, the landscape design and landscape design history programs formerly of the Radcliffe Seminars were transferred to the Arnold Arboretum. The landscape design program offers professional education for students who wish to pursue landscape design or landscape history as a career, to develop a heightened awareness of the landscape, to pursue research, or to refine skills for work in public agencies, private practices, historic preservation organizations, and planning boards. According to director Robert Cook, the institution is shifting back to a greater focus on research.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
Storm events:
Particularly severe storm events can decimate the collections of the Arnold Arboretum and negatively impact the longevity and value of the research over time. The infamous hurricane of 1938 did more damage to the collections than any other event before or since. In April 1997, a storm affected more than 1,700 trees. Of these, 400 trees had to be removed entirely. The threat of another devastating event always looms over the living collections, which derive much of their value from the longevity of data collected about them. 

Pesticides:
In the late 1990s, the Arnold Arboretum grounds maintenance crew cut their pesticide use by 85% by switching to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies that rely heavily on natural predators. 

Chloride levels:
Because of the high chloride levels in Boston's water supply, the Arboretum has at times watered its vegetation during the summers using two on-site water sources ("The Green Triangle of Boston, Massachusetts: an eco-industrial cluster," 2002).

Hemlock wooly adelgid:
Hemlock wooly adelgid has attacked the old growth and new growth hemlock trees on Hemlock Hill in the main section of the Arboretum. The Arboretum has developed a plan for dealing with the deadly tree disease, which is available online (Management Plan for Hemlock Hill).

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ACCESS ISSUES:
Access (general):
According to historian Ida Hay, the original challenge to laying out the Arnold Arboretum was the inaccessibility of the land to the public. This early design issue has continued to be problematic to those who seek to make the area's greenspaces accessible to local communities. The edges of the Arboretum lie largely along low-density residential land, back yards, and the inside edge of the Needham Commuter Rail. None of these sections of the Arboretum facilitate good access for people in the Heart of the City. In fact, some of the few points of access that should be available to dense neighborhoods with lower-income and largely minority communities are in fact blocked or have no signage. Two such areas lie along the commuter rail line in Roslindale.

Issues of access are highly charged among some surrounding residents. A 2002 plan to remove an entrance to the Arboretum on Walter Street met with deep community resistance and, eventually, a new plan that kept and improved the entrance. 

Access (for disabled visitors):
In 2002, there was insufficient access to the Arboretum for disabled visitors. A slope of asphalt makes the Arboretum handicapped accessible at the gated Arborway entrance near the Forest Hills Station. This slope, however, is often blocked by vehicles and is not marked as a handicapped entrance. When partially blocked, the wheelchair bound have made dangerous attempts to enter the Arboretum. New entrances on Bussey Street accommodate handicapped visitors.

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USE ISSUES:
The Arboretum is intended for passive recreation. No organized sports are allowed on the grounds and even activities such as picnicking are not permitted. Dogs are allowed on the grounds if they are on a leash. Cycling is permitted, but only on paved trails and roads. At times, Arboretum abuses occur, including mountain biking on unpaved trails, picnicking, dogs running without leashes and leaving feces behind them, people who collect plant material, and sometimes more serious crimes (addressed below in in the SOCIAL ISSUES section).

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SOCIAL ISSUES: 
Relationship between the Arnold Arboretum and surrounding communities:
As a private research institution on public land, the Arnold Arboretum must accomplish its academic goals while playing host to the public at large. These two mandates sometimes conflict and for more than 100 years the Arboretum has had a tenuous and often aloof relationship with the communities that surround it.

As a research institution, the mission statement of the Arboretum is to develop and maintain its living collection of plants, to study the plants, and to provide instruction in fields related to the living collection. The core mission statement of the Arnold Arboretum does not include goals to be a welcoming community resource. For those dedicated to the Arboretum's core academic vision, the public can be seen as a distraction and at times a threat to the central purpose of the institution.

Ambivalence about the public among managers of the Arnold Arboretum has a long history. Historian Alexander von Hoffman called the Arboretum of the early 1900s "an esoteric institution with little relevance to the community." According to von Hoffman, Charles Sargent, the first director of the Arboretum, allowed the public to visit and facilitated guided school tours, but grumbled about the conduct of the public he was obligated to welcome. Sargent raised funds for the fledgling Arboretum from a small number of wealthy Bostonians rather than from the surrounding communities. He sought to insulate the administration of the Arboretum from outside local government.

In contrast, Jamaica Plain is an intensely political neighborhood where citizens are highly involved in virtually all aspects of community life, including the development, maintenance, and management of public open spaces. Changes that take place in Jamaica Plain are typically proceeded by a community-driven planning process.

Since the Arboretum was first created, some community members have felt alienated by the independence of the institution and some residents have not valued the parkland or seen it as their own. In the early 1900s, local citizens suggested subdividing the Arboretum and developing housing on it (Alexander von Hoffman, 1994). Because enthusiasm about and commitment to public parks was at this time extraordinarily high, it suggests that local people did not particularly value the Arboretum or experience it as their own. After World War II, the Boston Housing Authority sought to claim a chunk of the Arboretum and what was then the Joyce Kilmer Park by eminent domain to build public housing. The surrounding community protested, and the project did not come to pass (Vale, Lawrence. From the Puritans to the projects: public housing and public neighbors. Harvard University Press. 2000). Then, in 1970 and 1971, local legislature proposed that there be "tennis courts, bicycle paths, ski tows, swimming pools, skating rinks, and play areas" within the Arnold Arboretum (Richard Howard, former Director of the Arnold Arboretum, 1971). Clearly, this proposal did not come to pass, but also reflects a lack of communication and understanding between the city and the university.

Some residents of surrounding communities continue to experience a sense of distance between citizens and the Arboretum, while others consider the Arnold Arboretum fully integrated into the neighborhood and recognize the advantage of a publicly accessible open space managed with a reliable source of private funding. Increasingly, the Arnold Arboretum engages communities in decision-making that affects them. Recent examples include the development of a new plan for the Walter Street gate into the Arnold Arboretum, the development of the Blackwell Footpath through Bussey Meadow, and to some extent the 2002 master planning process for the Arboretum as a whole. 

Vandalism:
Over the years, vandalism has periodically been a problem at the Arboretum. A group calling themselves the "Shot Brothers" claimed responsibility in the mid 1960s for hacking down trees and peeling off tree bark. An intentionally-set fire caused damage to part of the living collections in 1963. Beginning in 1957, the Arboretum has documented children building huts and breaking branches off of Arboretum trees. In 1991, the Arboretum documented spray-painted trees and rocks, and scraped off tree bark. Other abuses of the Arboretum over the years have included excessive litter and broken park furniture. 

Other crime:
Although vandalism and larceny/ attempted larceny have been the most frequently reported crimes in this area according to the Boston Police Department, other types of crime have occurred in the Arboretum. Between 1999 and 2001, there have been an average of two or three reported drug incidences in the Arnold Aboretum annually. Sexual assault has also been reported. The Arnold Arboretum had a fence up over the stone wall that runs along the Arborway and in recent years removed a large section of that fence. This situation is reflective of administrative ambivalence about the extent to which the Arnold Arboretum can and should protect its collections and the extent to which it should be open and welcoming to the public.

Dead animal dumping:
In July of 2002, about two dozen animal corpses wrapped in fertilizer bags were found by City park rangers near Bussey Street. It is not clear whether the animals were sacrificed in some sort of ritual, as has occurred in Franklin Park.

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PLANNING PROCESSES:
In 2002, the Arnold Arboretum staff completed a comprehensive long-term master planning process that relates to virtually every element of Arboretum operations. In the winter of 2002, the implications of the planning process were only beginning to become clear, according to the director of the Arboretum, Dr. Robert Cook. Major changes in the organization of the Arboretum are being made, such as the adoption of a more ambitious and scientifically significant research agenda. The institution hopes to build new administrative facilities to complement the Hunnewell Building, particularly in light of increased demands on limited space with the relocation of the Radcliffe Seminar landscape design program to the Arboretum in July of 2002. According to Cook, it is also possible that the full herbarium, which is currently stored in Cambridge, may return to the Arboretum and be housed in a new facility.

According to the Arboretum website in 2004, three sites are being proposed for future development. They are:

-- The Hunnewell Building extension for public and professional programs: The Arboretum proposes adding a wing to the Hunnewell Building on its northeast side of approximately 10,000 to 15,000 square feet.

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TESTIMONIES:
"The beauty of the Arnold Arboretum is constant, although its color varies from week to week, from season to season. Subtle gradation of greens abound in any month, thanks to the profusion of non-deciduous trees, but in the spring the grounds offer a constantly changing symphony of colors. In April come the golden masses of forsythias, and the creamy white blossoms of magnolias, which seem strangely exotic so early in a New England spring. In May follow the pinks of the flowering cherries and crabs; when the azaleas blossom the walks are splashed with the parrot-brilliance of yellow and pink and white and flame color. The lilacs in bloom on Bussey Hill clothe it as with a mantel. Here are massed unexpectedly subtle variations of grayish-blue, lavender, rose and deep reddish purple," (p7-8. Sutton, 1971). "I've heard people at the Arboretum say, 'I really don't care about the public. I manage a collection.' They look inward at their space" (Margaret Dyson, Boston Parks Department).

"There are a lot of pictures of the Arboretum over the years. But I don't think I've ever seen a picture from inside the Arboretum looking out" (Alice Ingerson, formerly of the Institute of Cultural and Landscape Studies, Arnold Arboretum).

"Employees of the Arboretum lived in JP and Sargent's publicity releases about Lilac or Crabapple Sundays were dutifully used to fill space in the local papers, but that was the extent of the Arboretum's affiliation with the neighborhood in which it was located" (Alexander von Hoffman (in reference to the first years of the Arboretum), Local Attachments, p79).

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