Fall/Winter 2022
Volume 17 | Issue #3
I'm writing to you in the midst of our seasonal appreciation of the beauty of the landscape surrounded by autumn leaves and on the cusp of future snowfall. We are also at the conclusion of the Arboretum’s 15th anniversary already -- tempus fugit, as they say. As the leaves and temperature drop, I bask in the Arboretum’s seasonal celebration with its myriad of fall colors and I am reminded that time marches on.
This year brought the beginnings of the Bard Horticulture Guild, a unique summer opportunity for Bard undergraduates to engage and learn about the professional world of horticulture. We also saw a surge in garden tour requests at both Blithewood and Montgomery Place formal gardens, possibly due to our collective renewed appreciation for the outdoors as we emerge from the pandemic and our desire to reconnect with all things green.
This year also welcomed increased interest from Bard faculty to bring academics into the Arboretum. When the campus becomes the classroom and when learning expands outside the walls of a building, learning becomes an entirely new experience and allows students to deepen their connection with the place and understand the importance of being good stewards of the land.
Finally, I am excited to welcome 2024 with a fresh look -- our new logo. Many thanks go out to graphic designer Francie Soosman and to Arboretum's Assistant Jana Mader for their help to capture the essence of where we are going next in one simple image. It represents a clean and crisp beginning and emphasizes the Arboretum’s new focus as “A Place to Grow” -- our subheading that not only echos Bard’s “A Place to Think” motto, but also speaks to our recognition of Bard’s unique place in the Hudson Valley. It also is meant to invite you to join us in learning, connecting, healing, and inspiring others to appreciate all that the living realm has to offer.
Happy holidays to you!
Amy
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Amy Parrella ‘99
Arboretum Director
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Education at the Bard Arboretum |
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🌿 New Horticulture Guild Comes to Bard
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This summer the Bard Arboretum hosted the first Horticulture Guild session with eight undergraduate students. Each week students worked 36 hours per week alongside Bard Horticulture staff, landscaping the Bard campus grounds, and also spent 4 hours learning Horticulture 101, inside and outside of the classroom. Topics included: Tools & Safety, Plant Identification & Culture, Landscape Design & Maintenance, Professionalism & Careers, Invasive Plants, Plant Health Care, Plant Research & Conservation, Sustainable Landscape Management, Plant Propagation & Production, Arboriculture, and Education & Interpretation. Field trips included: a campus tree walk, invasive plant walk, and sustainability walk, Blithewood Garden, Olin's green demonstration parking lot, Bard Farm, Bard's greenhouse, Montgomery Place, and the Arboretum's exhibit on Frederick Law Olmsted at the Campus Center. Additionally, each week students were treated to a networking opportunity with a new professional at our Lunch & Learn sessions. Each professional gave the students an up-close look at their specific work and how it relates to plants.
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🌿 The Arboretum as an Outside Classroom
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The Bard Arboretum is experiencing delightful increased use by faculty and staff this year. Many classes, walks, art installations, dances, and student and volunteer projects and activities have utilized the campus landscape as an outdoor classroom and venue. Some of these include:
Fall 2022 Courses
“HUM 234 Landscape Studies: The Hudson River Valley” by Prof. Jana Mader
“ANTH 211 Ancient Peoples before Bard” by Prof. Christophe Lindner
ART 109 Print I with Prof. Adrianne Colburn
HIST 123 The Window at Montgomery Place with Prof. Myra Armstead
EUS 100 Introduction to Environmental Studies with Prof. Beate Liepert and Monique Segarra
Walks, Tours, Art, and Dance
Outdoor Adventure Camp with Bard Nursery School at Montgomery Place
Path Through History guided tour
Hudson River Ramble guided tour
Fall Open House guided tours
Family Weekend Guided tours at Montgomery Place and Blithewood Open House
Fisher Center’s Biennial The Belly is a Garden, an outdoor dance performance at the American Sycamore tree on North Campus with Vivien Sansour
Ikebana: The Art of Flower Arranging Lecture and Demonstration Workshop with Michiko Baribeau
Monthly campus Arboretum walks open to the public
Student and Volunteer Projects
Tree Rings at Montgomery Place, senior Grace Derksen
Collecting and cleaning native seed with volunteer Candice Waldron and student Nique Allen
Garden education at Mill Road Primary School in Red Hook with student Alyssa Valachovic
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🌿 Blithewood Introduces New Pollinator Plantings
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Thanks to a generous donation in honor of Betsey Ely ‘65, two large garden beds along the eastern walls at Blithewood garden are transformed to better suit today’s climate. Planted in the 1990s with variegated Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica ‘Variegata’), a deciduous shrub with heart-shaped green and white leaves and red stems, a slightly less aggressive version of its extremely invasive relative Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica), had taken over its neighboring plants. Given today’s focus on the importance of providing for pollinators, this ecologically-useless plant has become less fashionable. The Bard Horticulture Guild and full-time staff spent three days digging out its extensive root system, removing and replacing all the soil in these two beds. A variety of native plants now occupy these beds. Notable plants include Actea, Agastache, Asarum, Asclepias, Baptisa, Chelone, Clethra, Dryopteris, Echinacea, Physostegia, and Salvia.
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🌿 Frederick Law Olmsted Exhibit at Campus Center
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Bard’s Arboretum was pleased to present an exhibit on Frederick Law Olmsted’s contributions to Landscapes for the Public Good, on the bicentennial of his birth and the 15th-anniversary celebration of the founding of the Bard Arboretum over the summer months. Over 20 printed interpretive panels lined the hallway of the Campus Center in tribute to this landscape all-star.
Olmsted and his professional collaborators, namely with the help of Calvert Vaux (1828-1895) and his partners Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) and Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901) played a pivotal role in creating Bard’s own landscape at Blithewood, Montgomery Place and at Miramonte.
Andrew Jackson Downing gave birth to Central Park and landscape architecture in America. His partner, Calvert Vaux teamed up with Frederick Law Olmsted to create and execute a concept for Central Park as a natural landscape, a greensward filled with millions of trees, over 800 acres of public open space in the heart of Manhattan. Their vision in the latter half of the 1800s influenced the development of parks across the country.
Happy 200th Birthday, Olmsted!
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Events at the Bard Arboretum |
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🌿 Family Weekend was in October!
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From October 21–23, Bard welcomed parents, family members, and alumni/ae to campus for Family and Alumni/ae Weekend. The schedule was packed full of activities, showcasing just about every program on campus. The Arboretum offered tours of Montgomery Place's historic landscape and held an Open House at Blithewood Garden.
Photos by Karl Rabe
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The volunteers of Montgomery Place enjoyed our annual Volunteer Appreciation get-together and lunch at Wilderstein Historic Site in Rhinebeck. Although not popularly known to many, Wilderstein has a rich family history that extends from the middle of the nineteenth century until 1991, spanning the estate’s creation, its renovation, and now its preservation as a house museum showcasing architectural and design elements as well as a family story that is tied to our nation’s history. A heartfelt thanks goes out to all of our hard-working volunteers who help keep Montgomery Place going!
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The Bard Arboretum in The News: |
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🌿 Montgomery Place Gardens Get Noticed
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Old Dutch Village Garden Club of Upper Red Hook nominated the formal gardens at Montgomery Place Campus at Bard in September, as their official Garden of the Month. Recently they decorated the Red Hook Village center for Hardscrabble Day in September and highlighted all the farms, orchards, and gardens nearby. Thank you Rosalie Rossi, Montgomery Place garden volunteer and member of Old Dutch Village Garden Club!
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🌿 For Two College Students, a Place (and a Person) to Call Home
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Read the full story in the New York Times here
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🌿 Stargon Gets a New Lease on Life
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Lifeless for over 6 months while waiting for repairs, Robert Perless’ kinetic sculpture, Stargon, is now back to its original splendor. It resides behind Manor Dormitory and stands 80 feet tall and 50 feet wide. In 1987, the piece was presented to Bard College by Toni and Martin Sosnoff.
The slightest wind sets the massive artwork into motion, but last year it came to a screeching halt when it was discovered that the hardware had become stripped and rusted. A crane was employed to remove the piece from its base and the interior mechanical gears had to be reworked by Mr. Perless and reassembled on-site. Stargon is one of the many art installations found on Bard’s campus that are overseen by the Center for Curatorial Studies Hessel Museum and maintained by Bard’s Buildings and Grounds.
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🌿 Montgomery Place Now Has Its Own Instagram Account! |
Follow @montgomeryplacebard to get the latest news about Montgomery Place at Bard College. |
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Thank you for your interest and for your continued
support for the Bard Arboretum and its beautiful gardens.
Have a wonderful beginning to the winter!
🌿 🌿 🌿
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🌿 ‘Tis the Season to Give a Gift and Help Grow the Arboretum
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Give the gift that keeps giving with a membership to the Bard Arboretum. Your donation will support education, tree preservation, and our living classroom initiatives. To give a gift membership or support the Arboretum, visit:
🌿 To give a gift, click here.
🌿 Become a volunteer here.
🌿 Renew your membership here.
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