Arboretum !” The perception of the Arboretum has changed so dramatically in the last 20 years . People see it as that wonderful , vibrant green space that the city needs in order to be livable .
I don ’ t think that I sensed that much when I was living there as a student . There were great plants there , but there was no real sense of intrinsic worth to the city .
JO : How about the Arboretum itself ? Do you feel like the general public benefits directly from the idea of having an arboretum collection within the city ?
DH : Well , I think that ’ s the learning curve we ’ re still up against : teaching people the provenance of a plant — where it comes from — and trying to excite their imaginations that this maple , say , comes from the Sichuan Province and exists somewhere else in its raw form . And here it is growing in Seattle . That notion just seems to go over people ’ s heads .
I ’ m up against that all the time here at Heronswood , where I ’ m excitingly telling folks that this plant is from Southern Chile . They ’ re , well , “ That ’ s where you bought it ?” It ’ s just such a hard message to get through , but once people get it , then the world comes alive . And I think that the more people who do get it , the more the message is going to be passed on in ways that people can grasp . When people like me talk about plants , we often do so in ways that can intimidate the beginner . But if you have a young 10-year-old excitingly talking about a tree that grows in Australia with the kangaroos , then that ’ s where the seed gets planted and the excitement carries forward .
JO : Do you feel like that center area of Pacific Connections — where you get a taste of each of the forest gardens — is an important part of that educational process ?
DH : Yes , that was a smart move . It had to have been my idea !! What I hope , too , is that the interpretive shelter brings a human interaction with the cultural aspects of the plants and the native habitats into the conversation — that it helps people realize that humans are part of an ecosystem and that we ’ re not above it .
JO : I think it does an excellent job of that . So looking ahead , 20 , 50 years , what do you hope will happen in the Arboretum ?
DH : I guess I hope for a continually evolving garden . That ’ s a dicey thing to say because we all get attached to our trees , such as me and that Tetracentron , which I want to continue to be there .
But over the years , we ’ ve gotten attached to that bigleaf maple that ’ s also there , and that Douglas fir , and then all of a sudden we don ’ t have an Arboretum . We have a park . And so I want to think that the Arboretum ’ s going to go forward with the idea that the plantings — in order to be effective and truly educational — have to be relatively ephemeral , that there has to be change . And that doesn ’ t mean that everything has to come out , or that we can ’ t have reverence for those big , giant sequoias in the Sequoia Grove .
However , to really understand the plant kingdom and help conserve it , we have to continually examine the collection and ask what is most worthy of being illustrated or studied at this point in time . And we have to make those really hard decisions about whether the life expectancy of a particular tree has exceeded our expectations and whether it ’ s time to move on to something else .
So yes , my hope is that we have a living , breathing , dying , rejuvenating collection going forward . m
Jennifer Ott is an environmental historian and the assistant director of HistoryLink . org , an online encyclopedia of state and local history in Washington state . Her most recent book is “ Olmsted in Seattle : Creating a Park System for a Modern City ” ( History Link / Documentary Media LLC , 2019 ).
Elegant patterns of spaces and views that unfold over time .
Landscape Architecture bergerpartnership . com
Fall 2021 v 25