The current Master Plan for
the Arboretum includes a reorienation and renovation of the plant collections.
It will be a phased transition from the largely uninterpreted taxonomic
reference arrangement to one that is more thematically organized. The
goal is to develop a coordinated series of ecology-based exhibits that
present dynamic horticultural and environmental messages.
The Arboretum Plan restructures the collections of woody plants and
woody plant communities around ecological themes that identify the
site's principal landforms and define their horticultural and educational
meanings.
These ecological themes will ehance the original Olmsted Brothers
collections/display scheme for an evolutionary sequence of taxonomic
groups. The teaching of ecological relationships is replacing taxonomic
classification as the preferred model in science education. Therefore,
it is appropriate that ecology succeed taxonomy as the guiding collections/display
theme in the Arboretum and is used to further explain the taxonomic
classification of plants.
Just as the Olmsted Brothers' plan focused on a higher level in a
taxonomic hierarchy--emphasizing plant families over individual species--The
Arboretum Plan's ecological scheme focuses on the broader theme of
temperate forests, rather than on individual plant associations or
communities. In essence, we have already been doing this for the last
65 years, but now we are going to tell this story.
The world's temperate forests--and the relationships among the organisms
that comprise them--form the theme of the Arboretum's basic curriculum.
Revealing the similarities and differences of the world's temperate
forests is a powerful way to interest visitors in local and global
conservation issues, and to encourage them to think about their own
garden in a larger ecological context. This theme gives the Arboretum
an opportunity to present a clear, concise and relevant message to
visitors and potential donors, while creating a truly world-class
collection of woody plants.
There are many advantages to using a central ecological theme to
re-emphasize the core collections of specimen woody plants and woody
plant communities. Perhaps the most important is that a central ecological
theme best reconciles significant existing specimens with future collection
and exhibit development. Any other comprehensive theme, or various
theme combinations, would result in locating new exhibits in areas
containing existing plants or displays that do not fit the new theme.
While numerous specimens within the existing collection should eventually
be removed for horticultural or curatorial reasons, the Arboretum
Plan minimizes widespread culling simply to shape the collection into
a new theme.