Arnold Arboretum Follows Teaching Path

In the heart of Jamaica Plain lies a sprawling garden that is visited almost daily by wide-eyed apprentice gardeners who are generally under four feet tall.

They are grade school students, for the most part, and they are visiting Harvard's Arnold Arboretum to compare its lush greenery with the miniature plots they tend in their schoolyards.

As the recently-appointed director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum leads the conservatory into a new phase of its 117-year history, the institution seems to be bolstering its commitment to teaching and research.

Arboretum director Robert E. Cook '68, named last December, says one of his top priorities will be an emphasis on early science education "and the role we might play reaching out to schools."

Having so many types of plants together in one place provides students from all over Boston and New England with an opportunity to study botanic specimens first-hand. For the past six years, the arboretum has run programs with Boston and Cambridge public schools that teach plant and tree identification to grade school students.

The arboretum's land--265 acres that are three blocks from the T's Arborway stop on the green line--is owned by the city of Boston but is leased by Harvard for the nominal fee of $1 per year. The property houses more than 7,000 kinds of trees, shrubs and other plants.

The arboretum has increasingly stressed hands-on education since it began working with Boston-area schools in 1983, when 450 school children came to the arboretum for special classes. Since then the number of children visiting annually has increased to more than 4,000.

Although the arboretum sponsors professional symposiums each year and runs mini-courses for adults, which have attracted more than 5,000 people annually during the past three years, programs for grade school students have remained its main educational focus.

Cook, who oversaw the development of a plant science curriculum for elementary school children while at Cornell Plantations, came to Harvard after directing Cornell's arboretum and botanical gardens. The curriculum he helped develop is now used in schools throughout New York State.

While Cook says that fundraising will be one of his priorities, he emphasizes that he he has no immediate plans to initiate a fund drive. The arboretum currently has an annual operating budget of $2.8 million--70 percent of which comes from its endowment--and depends for the remainder upon both public and private grants, income from education programs, membership fees and donations and revenues from the arboretum shop.

Since his arrival here, Cook says, he has been trying to familiarize himself with his new stomping grounds. "I've spent much of my time just making progress in knowing the elements of the arboretum's structure," Cook says. "I want to try to make the Arnold Arboretum more financially sound and reach out to the community."

Much of Cook's plans follow themes that the previous arboretum director, Professor of Dendrology Peter Ashton, set during his five-year tenure. Cook points out Ashton's administration instituted the cooperative programs with Boston-area schools.

"For one thing, the state of science education in this country is one of my concerns," says Cook. "I'm going to be looking for funding for expanding our teaching capacities and reaching out to area schools to assist them in devising better elementary plant science education programs."

Diane Sylverson, coordinator for the arboretum's programs for Boston-area students, says the work that schools do with the arboretum ranges from annual field trips to coordinated year-long programs. In the long-term programs, which the arboretum conducts mainly with local schools, Sylverson and other arboretum staffers visit the classroom and teach about the flora with which students later have contact.

Sylverson notes that one of the most successful programs last year involved bringing handicapped and special-needs children from Cambridge schools to the arboretum, along with older students. The older students helped the special-needs children with the classification of plants that the students examined. The program was discontinued this year due to a lack of funds.

Much of the financing for the arboretum's special programs comes from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities. Sylverson says she is concerned about funding for some programs because the council has been experiencing funding problems in the wake of the state budget crunch.

But funding has not been the arboretum's only problem in recent years. About 10 years ago, a woman was attacked while jogging through the arboretum in the early morning. Security at the arboretum was subsequently increased. Today park rangers from the Boston Park District patrol the grounds on horseback and in jeep vans. Boston Police also drive through the grounds many times daily, says Jo Procter, the arboretum's public affairs oficer.

Another recurring problem has been the occasional dumping of waste on the arboretum's fields. The latest instance was in February. The arboretum's gate was broken open and trash was found dumped near the road in a remote section of the park.

Procter says the problem of dumping has increased in recent years because of the filling up of landfill in the Boston area. Dumping has also been a problem in other area parks, she says. While increased security can take care of some of the problem, Procter says only conservation and recycling can help to alleviate that problem in the long run.

But the arboretum's history is much richer than the past, somewhat troubled decade might indicate. The conservatory draws some of its reputation from being the only arboretum of its kind designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, one of America's first and greatest landscape architects. He also planned New York's Central Park and Boston's "Emerald Necklace"--the series of parkways lining Brookline Avenue and Route One--as well as the Charles River Basin. Because of Olmsted's reputation as a landscape architect, architecture schools from around the world send students and faculty to view the grounds and examine plants they have been studying in landscape-planning courses.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design brings its students to the arboretum, as does Simmons, Wheelock and Boston University, which use the property to train their education students in botanical teaching and other sciences.

Harvard courses taught through the arboretum include introductory biology classes, an extension school course on vascular plants and a course taught by Koller on botany.

"Students use our research and slide library and we have an active exchange program with many arboretums, herbariums and universities around the world," says Jeanne Christianson, coordinator of visitor services. "We have over a million plant species preserved or pressed from over a hundred years of collecting."

The collecting side of the arboretum's work comprises probably its most lasting effect on the botanical world, although it is renowned for its landscaping and the selection of the portion of its living collection planted at Jamaica Plain.

Scientists working out of the arboretum's facilities are currently doing work on the flora of all of China and North America, as well as work on other countries' flora. The professors working on the China flora project came to Harvard in March to discuss its progress.

Another area Cook says he wishes to focus on is the greater awareness of the problems of deforestation of rain forests and the preservation of plants from areas that may be deforested soon.

The arboretum is involved in several conservation projects, one of them collecting plants from rain forests in Southeat Asia before they disappear. This project, funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society, is being done with help with the Herbarium Bogoriense, the national herbarium of Indonesia, the Sarallka and National Museum of the Philippines, as well as herbariums in Thailand and Paupau New Guinea.

The arboretum also has faculty studying rain forests and the evolution of their complex biological makeup. Cook says he wants to "focus on work at the arboretum on biodiversity and the loss of rain forests. We should be supporting efforts by various departments more and using our resources more to support that kind of effort."

The research resources of the arboretum are about the best in the world for work on any type of botany work, says Mercer Fellow John S. Burley, a botanist working at the arboretum.

Burley's particular project, funded by the National Cancer Institute, involves the collection of Southeast Asian plants that might help in alleviating or curing cancer and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The work, which is being done jointly with the University of Illinois at Chicago's pharmaceutical program, also entails the interviewing of doctors and other natives who know which plants are used as medicinals.

Burley has collected plants from the Philippines and Sumatra so far. He is also working on the National Geographic Society project and the Southeast Asia flora project.

Projects such as Burley's depend upon the Arboretum's plant and written libraries for much of their basic research. Without the wide-ranging collection of Southeast Asian plants the arboretum holds, Burley says his work would be very difficult.

The plant collection includes more than 1.5 million plant specimens.

So, as Cook begins his tenure, his major goals are already approaching fruition. The arboretum is finding its place as both a resource center for scholars, and a learning ground for the young. The garden just may yield a bumper crop one day soon.