Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Expanding our Educational Outreach | Page 7

Horticulture at Mount Auburn Under the Spotlight
By David P. Barnett, Vice President of Operations & Horticulture
The significance of Mount Auburn’s plant
collections and the Cemetery’s high standards of horticul-
tural management have been recognized in se veral ways
during 2007.
Horticultural Roundtable, April 2007: Some of
the country’s leading botanic garden professionals and hor-
ticulture experts came to a day-long “roundtable” meeting
on April 9 to offer recommendations regarding strengths,
weaknesses and future directions for our tree, shrub and
groundcover collections. The meeting was scheduled to
coincide with Dan Hinkley’s part of the 175th Anniversary
lecture series at the Boston Public Library. In addition to
Dan, a celebrated West Coast horticulturist, plant explorer
and author, invited experts included Paul Meyer, the direc-
tor of the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia; Rick Lewan-
dowski, the director of the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware;
Peter Del Tredici of the Arnold Arboretum; and Peter
Bristol, a retired curator from the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Mount Auburn Trustees Tom Cooper, Louise Weed and
Bill Clendaniel, along with staff members Dennis Collins,
Claude Benoit, Paul Walker and I, also attended.
After a tour of the grounds, the group came up with
wide-ranging recommendations for enhancing the col-
lections and the landscape, many of which fit nicely with
the principles in our 1993 Master Plan and our ongoing
initiatives to use ecologically-sensitive horticultural mainte-
nance practices. These recommendations included: devising
policies on managing invasive plant species; creating and
maintaining vistas throughout the grounds; increasing the
plantings of massed shrubs and groundcovers in the “natu-
ralistic parkland” landscape character zones; and increasing
the horticultural diversity of our collections by adding new
species and cultivars to groups such as oaks and magnolias,
already plentiful on the grounds. All of the attendees com-
mented on the Cemetery’s overall beauty, tranquility and
high standards of maintenance.
North American Plant Collections Con-
sortium (NAPCC): In August Mount Auburn was
invited to be one of 15 institutions forming a national
collection of oaks (Quercus) under the NAPCC program.
The consortium, a joint venture of the American Public
Gardens Association (APGA) and the United States De-
partment of Agriculture, will help participants “maximize
the potential of their collections, by making efficient use of
available resources through a coordinated continent-wide
approach and strengthening their own collections through
collaboration with others.”
To join, an organization must have a valuable stock of
plant species germplasm (genetic material), a commitment
to conservation and preservation, high standards of collec-
tions management, and well-documented plant records.
Mount Auburn’s Horticultural Curator Dennis Col-
lins played the lead role in coordinating the efforts of 15
botanical gardens to produce one comprehensive database
containing the oak species represented in their collections
and then submitted this application to the NAPCC, the
first multi-institution application it has received. Our ac-
ceptance into the consortium signifies national recognition
of the importance of Mount Auburn’s plant collections,
particularly our diverse collection of oaks, many of which
pre-date the founding of Mount Auburn in 1831.
Members of the American Public Gardens Association in front of Bigelow
Chapel during the Plant Collections Symposium co-hosted by Mount Auburn
and Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, October 4-5, 2007.
Photo by Jennifer Johnston
Collections Symposium, October 2007:
Mount Auburn and the Arnold Arboretum co-hosted a
Symposium on October 4-5 in partnership with the Amer-
ican Public Gardens Association. Attended by over 100
botanical garden professionals from throughout the United
States and Canada, this two-day program focused on the
essentials of plant collections management and curation.
Plenary sessions explored creating a collections policy and
effective approaches to collections planning. Dennis Col-
lins gave a well-received presentation on Mount Auburn’s
ten-year process to establish a state-of-the-art program for
documenting, mapping and labeling our plant collections.
Fall 2007 | 5