page_title: Arnold Arboretum
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Arnold Arboretum / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts. General view (a); photograph taken by me, August 2005.
context_page_description: The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, established in 1872, is the oldest public arboretum in North America. This botanical research institution and free public park is located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts. The landscape was designed by Charles Sprague Sargent and Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest "link" in the Emerald Necklace. The Arnold Arboretum's collection of temperate trees, shrubs, and vines has a particular emphasis on the plants of the eastern United States and eastern Asia, where Arboretum staff and colleagues are actively sourcing new material on plant collecting expeditions. The Arboretum supports research in its landscape and in its Weld Hill Research Building.
context_section_description: The Arboretum was founded in 1872 when the President and Fellows of Harvard College became trustees of a portion of the estate of James Arnold (1781–1868), a whaling merchant from New Bedford, Massachusetts. Arnold specified that a portion of his estate was to be used for "...the promotion of Agricultural, or Horticultural improvements". According to the deed of trust between the Arnold trustees and the College, income from Arnold's legacy was to be used for establishing, developing and maintaining an arboretum to be known as the Arnold Arboretum, which "shall contain, as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs ... either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air of West Roxbury." The historical mission of the Arnold Arboretum is to increase knowledge of woody plants through research and to disseminate this knowledge through education.
  Arnold's gift was combined with 120 acres (0.49 km²) of land that had been donated to Harvard University in 1842. Benjamin Bussey (1757–1842), a prosperous Boston merchant and scientific farmer, donated his country estate Woodland Hill and a part of his fortune to Harvard University "for instruction in agriculture, horticulture, and related subjects". Bussey had inherited land from fellow patriot Eleazer Weld in 1800 and further enlarged his large estate between 1806 and 1837 by acquiring and consolidating various farms that had been established as early as the seventeenth century. Harvard used this land for the creation of the Bussey Institute, which was dedicated to agricultural experimentation. The first Bussey Institute building was completed in 1871 and served as headquarters for an undergraduate school of agriculture.
  In June 1872 Charles Sprague Sargent was appointed as a professor of horticulture and the curator of the Arnold Arboretum; the following year he was appointed director of both the Arnold Arboretum and the Harvard Botanic Garden. In 1877, Sargent commissioned the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to prepare a road and pathway system. Sargent and Olmsted would delineate the collection areas by family and genus, following the then-current and widely accepted classification system of Bentham and Hooker. The Hunnewell Building was designed by architect Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr. and constructed in 1892, with funds donated by H. H. Hunnewell. The Weld Hill Research Building opened in 2011 and has been awarded LEED Gold certification.
  
  The Arboretum has a long history of supporting plant exploration in North America, East Asia, and elsewhere. Ernest Henry Wilson was among the Arboretum's most prolific collectors in the first fifty years. He led six collecting expeditions to Eastern Asia (primarily China, Japan, and Korea) between 1899 and 1919. Many of Wilson's plants still grow in the Arboretum landscape today. In 2015, the Arboretum staff launched a 10-year collecting campaign, prioritizing the collection of nearly 400 species, of which 177 have never been cultivated at the Arboretum.
  From 1946 to 1950 the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand was the landscape design consultant for the Arboretum. Her early training in the 1890s included time with Charles Sprague Sargent and Jackson Thornton Dawson, the chief propagator and superintendent . Today the Arboretum occupies 281 acres (114 ha) of land divided between four parcels, viz. the main Arboretum and the Peters Hill, Weld-Walter and South Street tracts. The collections are located primarily in the main Arboretum and on the Peters Hill tract. The Arboretum remains one of the finest examples of a landscape designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted's office, now known as the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, is located in nearby Brookline.
  William (Ned) Friedman is the eighth and current Director of the Arnold Arboretum. He is also the Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
  The Arnold Arboretum was a key reference for the establishment and development of modern botany in China, in particular the work of Chinese scholars Li Huilin, Wang 
caption: General view of Arnold Arboretum
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