Cornell Botanic Gardens


The Cornell Botanic Gardens is a botanical garden located adjacent to the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The Botanic Gardens proper consist of of botanical gardens and of the F. R. Newman Arboretum. The greater Botanic Gardens includes 40 different nature areas around Cornell and Ithaca, covering.
The origin of the Botanic Gardens dates back to Cornell's beginning in the mid-19th century and are part of the university's longtime interest in agriculture, forestry, and the natural sciences. The Botanic Gardens saw a major planting effort during the 1930s and assumed the name Cornell Plantations in 1944. Gardens and facilities have continually expanded, including a construction program at the start of the 21st century. The Botanic Gardens also maintains four gardens on Cornell's central campus. The Botanic Gardens offers three courses for academic credit, are used as a resource by other classes, host a number of informal lectures and tours, and have played a part in many scholarly papers., the Botanic Gardens had a $2.9 million annual operating budget. The name was changed to the current form in 2016.
The gardens specialize in trees and shrubs native to New York State. The themed herb garden is especially noted. The Botanic Gardens have been the subject of several books and films over the years, are open daily without charge, and have been recommended as a visitation site by a number of travel books and newspaper travel sections.

History

Prior to the founding of Cornell University, Ezra Cornell had a large farm on the East Hill above Ithaca, New York. As part of locating New York State's land-grant college in Ithaca, Cornell offered to donate the farm for use as a campus. In 1862, Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, wrote a colleague that a great university should include a botanical garden: “It must have the best of Libraries – collections in different departments – Laboratory – Observatory – Botanical Garden perhaps…” At the university's opening ceremony in 1868, Louis Agassiz, an internationally known naturalist, remarked that no other area could compete with Cornell's surroundings in the opportunities offered for the study of natural history. From its inception, Cornell formed a reputation for creative means of research into the natural sciences, including the establishment of the pioneering College of Agriculture.
When the university built its first women's dormitory in 1875, it included a conservatory for growing plants and a specimen tree collection. Separately, the College of Veterinary Medicine started a specialized garden of plants that are poisonous to livestock. Cornell's farm included two deep gorges which flanked both sides of the early campus, and as the campus developed the gorges remained undeveloped and filled with native plants and wildlife. These became the start of the on-campus gardens and arboretum. A goal of creating an explicit arboretum was proposed in various university reports to trustees and other publications in 1877, 1883, 1908, and 1914.
Image:Houston Pond of F. R. Newman Arboretrum.jpg|thumb|right|Houston Pond at the Arboretum; nearby is a site for events
Cornell's acquisition of off-campus forest land dates to 1898 and the founding of the New York State College of Forestry, which was the first forestry college in North America. As a part of establishing that school, Cornell acquired a demonstration forest near Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The harvesting of trees from that forest drew heated opposition from neighboring land owners. Although political opposition caused Cornell to transfer the forest lands under the "forever wild" protection of the Adirondack Forest Preserve and to transfer Cornell's forestry education programs to its College of Agriculture, Cornell continued to acquire forest land remote from its main campus. In 1935, the decision to create an arboretum was finally made and the university established the Arboretum as a separate department. From 1935 to 1940, the federal government's Civilian Conservation Corps Camp SP 48 devoted 170 to 200 workers to planting trees, constructing dikes, and building trails in order to develop the Arboretum.
In 1944, Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Dean emeritus of the College of Agriculture and a horticulturalist highly regarded around the world, proposed the name Cornell Plantations for an expanded department in a report that reflected the work of a number of botany and horticulture professors. By 1948, the Plantations numbered and the first Director was named, John F. Cornman. During a 1949 broadcast on widely heard radio station WGY, Cornell emeritus professor Bristow Adams reflected upon the now five-year-old Plantations, and stated that the relationship between humans and things that grow were of utmost importance and that gardens, forests, and parks were everlasting collections that "have the care and trusteeships of generation after generation."
In the mid-1960s, the sculpture garden was constructed in the middle of the Arboretum as a project of the College of Architecture Art and Planning. By 1965, the Plantations consisted of. By 1970, the university was issuing a publication called The Cornell Plantations, which contained general articles on nature and environmental topics.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the Arboretum was upgraded with new roads and plantings funded by major gifts from oil industry figure Floyd R. Newman, and in 1982 the Arboretum was formally named in his honor.
During the 1980s, the Plantations experienced people stealing pines and firs for Christmas trees, with in some cases trees being taken that were worth several thousand dollars. A successful countermeasure created by Gerardo Sciarra at the Plantations was covering the trees with a harmless yet visually unpleasant "Ugly Mix" spray that included hydrated limestone, an anti-desiccant, and water. The technique was subsequently recommended to others worried about tree theft. In 2009, the Plantations suffered from a series of thefts of new or rare plants. A director at the Plantations, which had no security in place, said that the thieves must have been experienced horticulturalists and that the loss of research and species had been a demoralizing experience.
At the start of the 21st century, the Plantations embarked on a construction program which included: Arboretum Center, Horticultural Center, Mullestein Winter Garden, Ramin Administration Building, Rowley Carpenter Shop, Plant Production Facility, and Lewis Education Center. The new $7.5 million Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center was dedicated on October 28, 2010. Five years in the designing and building, the new facility was built to LEED gold standards and won a 2010 Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect magazine.
By the 2010s, the name Cornell Plantations was proving problematic, due to the association of the word with plantations in the American South and slavery in the United States. In 2015 the university's Black Students United organization demanded that Cornell "change the name of as soon as possible." The name was technically inaccurate as well, with plantations usually being a large-scale monocultural for commercial purposes, which this was not. A change of the name was under consideration for the better part of ten years, and then during 2014–16 there were focus groups, surveys, and polls taken to determine a favorite among nine possible different names for the Plantations, and Cornell Botanic Gardens was chosen as the new name in 2016.

Current extent

F.R. Newman Arboretum

The F.R. Newman arboretum contains the following collections on :
; Chestnut Collection
American Chestnut:
Mundy Wildflower Garden, Schnee Oak Collection, Bald Hill and Caroline Pinnacles, Cayuta Lake, Ringwood Ponds, South Hill Swamp.
Source of plant:
The American Chestnut Foundation, Allen Nichols, Stanley Scharf
; Conifer Collection
; Flowering Crabapple Collection
; Maple Collection
; Oak Collection
; Urban Tree Collection
; Walnut Collection
In addition, the arboretum features an extensive set of trails.

Botanical gardens

The botanical gardens specialize in trees and shrubs native to New York State. Overall, they contain a wide variety of ornamental, useful, and native plants on, arranged into gardens as follows:
;Container Gardens
;Deans Garden
;Decorative Arts Flower Garden
;Flowering Shrub and Ornamental Grass Garden
;Groundcover Garden
Image:Cornell Plantations sundial.jpg|thumb|right|A sundial at the Robison Herb Garden
;Robison Herb Garden
;Heritage Vegetable Garden
;International Crop and Weed Garden
;Peony and Sun Perennial Garden
;Poisonous Plants Garden
;Rhododendron and Woodland Perennial Garden
;Rock Garden
;Wildflower Garden
;Winter Garden
;Woodland Streamside Garden

Nature areas

In addition to the gardens and arboretum, Cornell Botanic Gardens also manages an additional of biologically diverse natural areas, including bogs, fens, gorges, glens, meadows, and woodlands. These areas contain some of walking trails.
  • Bald Hill – Mountain laurel is abundant in this area.
  • Beebe Lake and Woods – In 1828, to capture the waterpower of Fall Creek, Ezra Cornell help construct Beebe Dam on Fall Creek. The dam and Lake have since been upgraded.
  • Bluegrass Lane Natural Areas – located near the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course.
  • Brooktondale Meadow
  • Carter Creek Preserve – of woodlands about southwest of Cornell.
  • Cascadilla Gorge – a gorge formed as Cascadilla Creek drops from the campus to downtown Ithaca, with a walking trail and many waterfalls.
  • Cascadilla Meadows – Cascadilla Creek was channelized when the Wilson Lab was constructed in this meadow flood plain.
  • Cayuga Marsh – a low-lying wetland of cattails at the north end of Lake Cayuga.
  • Cayuga Lake – on northeast shore.
  • Etna Fringed Gentian Area
  • Fall Creek Valley North
  • Fall Creek Valley South
  • Fischer Old-Growth Forest – a preserve containing rare examples of yellow oak.
  • Hertel Bowl
  • Lick Brook
  • Lighthouse Point – a biological station located a bit over from campus on the eastern shore of Lake Cayuga.
  • McDaniel Meadow, Woods and Swamp – former farm about north of campus.
  • McGowan Woods and Meadow
  • McLean Bogs a National Natural Landmark containing two small kettle bogs located in Dryden, New York.
  • Mitchell Street Natural Areas – examples of abandoned agricultural land.
  • Monkey Run
  • Mount Pleasant
  • Mundy Wildflower Garden
  • North Campus Natural Areas
  • Park Park – Forest Home Drive near New York Route 366
  • Polson Natural Area
  • Purvis Road Natural Areas –
  • Renwick Slope
  • Slaterville 600 – that includes the Slaterville Wildflower Preserve and old growth forest, given to the university by the Lloyd Library and Museum under condition that it remain forever wild.
  • Slim Jim Woods – borders the arboretum.
  • Steep Hollow Creek
  • The Tarr-Young Preserve
  • Turkey Hill Road Meadow
  • Upper Cascadilla
  • Warren Woods –