Winter/Spring 2022
Welcome Spring to Bard!
While many of you were away over intersession, the campus hunkered down and faced several snow and ice storms, starting in mid-January. While snow is nothing new for Bard, the recent extreme fluctuations of temperature and precipitation are Mother Nature's "new normal."
Additionally this winter, the Bard Arboretum hosted Bard’s Masters in Environmental Education graduate students 2022 J-Term Conference, alongside Hudsonia, Center for Experimental Humanities, and the knowledgeable staff at Montgomery Place. The two-day conference focused on place-based learning and outdoor leadership. The program’s goal was to learn from the people who teach in place at Montgomery Place and find inspiration from their methods and the environment so their diversity of experiences and backgrounds could offer ideas and guidance to future educators.
This year, I’m excited to announce the Arboretum’s 15th anniversary! During this pivotal year, we plan to focus on three main priorities: the revamping of the Arboretum’s education program, the continuation of the Blithewood Garden rehabilitation project, and the launch of Bard’s Native Nursery Initiative. Furthermore, we envision the Bard Arboretum as a place to learn, experience, and appreciate the importance of our nationally-significant historic landscape situated within the iconic Hudson Valley. To this end, we are inspired and committed to providing new educational and hands-on opportunities to those interested in learning more about our natural and cultural heritage, local biodiversity, and horticultural legacy. As we dive deeper into each of these efforts, updates will follow. Please stay tuned!
Of course, we couldn’t do any of this good work without our small, but dedicated family of supporters and professionals. I’d like to thoroughly and most sincerely thank our 15 years of donors and our core crew, namely, Sarah Price, Arboretum Curator, Jana Mader, Arboretum Education & Engagement Coordinator, and Nique Alladen, Native Nursery Intern.
If you are interested in learning more or supporting the Bard Arboretum, please visit our website at www.bard.edu/arboretum.
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Amy Parrella ‘99
Arboretum Director
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🌿 Covid-19 Protocols for Visiting Our Gardens |
The Bard College campus grounds are open to the community. Masks are not required outdoors in group settings for those who are fully vaccinated.
The Montgomery Place grounds are open daily from sunrise to sunset. Mansion tours are currently suspended. Visit the Montgomery Place website for more information.
All visitors to campus facilities must demonstrate proof of vaccination, including booster, in advance. As of March 1st, Bard College is a mask-friendly campus. This policy is lifting the indoor mask mandate but encourages anyone who wishes to wear a mask to do so.
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🌿 Bard College Arboretum Receives Five-Year Grant!
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Great news! The Bard College Arboretum has just been awarded a five-year grant through the Zoos, Botanical Gardens, & Aquariums Program (ZBGA) of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, & Historic Preservation. The grant will be used to maintain the 930-acre arboretum and offer educational programming to the Bard campus.
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🌿 Lecture Celebrates Blithewood’s Historic Legacy
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On a sunny Sunday afternoon, last September 19 from 2-4 pm, the Friends of Blithewood Garden and the Garden Conservancy hosted a discussion with Samuel G. White FAIA, partner at PBDW Architects, and Elizabeth White, editor-at-large at Monacelli, both with close ties to Blithewood Garden with James Brayton Hall, Garden Conservancy President, and CEO. The library room at Bard’s Levy Institute for Economics was packed with interested garden enthusiasts who enjoyed the conversation-style discussion about the garden’s national, local, and personal significance to the speakers. |
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🌿 Blithewood Garden Project Update
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Since 2016, we have partnered with The Garden Conservancy, to preserve the nationally significant Beaux-Arts garden we call Blithewood Garden. We are delighted to announce that a winning proposal has been selected for the creation of construction drawings detailing the repair of Blithewood’s architectural elements, which have been hard-hit by the passage of time. This represents a crucial step toward repairing this important cultural landscape for future generations. New York City-based firms Jan Hird Pokorny Associates (JHPA) and Integrated Conservation Resources, Inc. (ICR) joined forces on a proposal representing a top team with extensive experience in historic preservation. JHPA’s work includes notable projects at Coe Hall - Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Olana State Historic Site and Old Westbury Gardens. ICR’s project portfolio includes the Main Fountain Garden at Longwood Gardens, Miramar in Newport, RI, and Temple of the Sky at Untermyer Gardens. Building on the comprehensive research already in place, JHPA & ICR will produce construction drawings for the site’s hardscape elements that can be implemented in phases. This represents a major step toward repairing this nationally significant cultural landscape.
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🌿 New Blithewood Vista Sign & Planting
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Blithewood received a new interpretive sign about the 2020 Historic Vista Restoration Project. It details the history, process, and best practices used to create a new vista along the Hudson River, which are also outlined in the Creating and Maintaining Hudson River Views manual. Funding for this document was provided by the New York State Environmental
Protection Fund and administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC)’s Hudson River Estuary Program in partnership with NEIWPCC.
NEIWPCC is a regional commission that helps the states of the Northeast preserve and advance water quality. NEIWPCC engages and convenes water quality professionals and other interested parties from New England and New York to collaborate on water, wastewater, and environmental science challenges across shared regions, ecosystems, and areas of expertise.
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🌿 Meet our Team: Jana Mader
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Bard faculty Jana Mader joined the Bard Arboretum in 2019 as a research assistant for a book project on Dr. Samuel Bard, the first horticulturist in the U.S. and grandfather of John Bard. Since then, she has taken care of newsletters and website updates and helped organize the Salon Lecture Series at Montgomery Place. This semester, she works closely with Arboretum Director Amy Parrella to establish an academic program for the Bard Arboretum. Her research focuses on Environmental Humanities, specifically the Hudson River Valley.
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🌿 Bard's New Native Nursery Initiative
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In fall 2021, Nique Alladen '24, a Bard undergraduate student, collected seeds from nearly two dozen native species found in Bard’s landscape, cleaned the seed, and sowed them. While some species may take up to two years to germinate, such as the Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), many should germinate this spring.
This is a pilot project for the future Bard Native Nursery – an initiative to gather and grow native seed collected on Bard’s campus in efforts to protect and promote local biodiversity that is adapted to the local existing climatic conditions. By increasing the number of ecotypic species grown in our landscape, we are committing to redistributing these crucial plants for the insects and animals that depend on them. Many native plants sold in nurseries may be grown in very different climates and as a result have become adapted to very different temperatures and weather conditions, making them less suitable for Hudson Valley gardens.
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🌿 Chestnut Gall Research Project Underway in Bard’s Living Laboratory
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The Bard Arboretum became the research laboratory for Chris Johnston, a master's student at SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), who is conducting a statewide survey for an invasive pest of chestnut trees known as the Asian chestnut gall wasp. Several of Bard’s Chinese Chestnut trees (Castanea mollissima) were identified to have the Asian chestnut gall wasp on the tips of their branches. Chris will continue to evaluate these trees for his research over the next year.
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🌿 Arboretum Joins the Pollinator Pathway Project
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Launched to encourage and support habitat for native pollinators, the Putnam Pollinator Pathway is an initiative of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Putnam County. Individuals, groups, clubs, parks, libraries, care facilities, golf courses, schools, commercial and retail entities, municipalities, and others, are joining together to establish a corridor for pollinators spanning Putnam County and connecting with other Pathways across the Northeast.
People along the Pathway are planting native trees, shrubs, and flowers to provide pollinators with healthy habitats (food, water, shelter). Creating a pesticide-free corridor of public and private properties forges links between our communities, provides the diversity of plant species all nature needs and makes our landscape more healthy and beautiful. The Bard Arboretum is proud to join this good cause.
Join the Pollinator Pathway!
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The Bard Arboretum in The News: |
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🌿 Blithewood gets featured in Chronogram: 7 Must-Visit Public Gardens in the Hudson Valley
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"The word paradise comes from the Greek for walled garden. Indeed, paradise is what Blithewood Garden at Bard College is—in all senses of the word. A traditional walled Italianate garden, designed by Francis L. V. Hoppin at the turn of the 20th century, Blithewood is perched 130 feet above the Hudson River, with breathtaking vistas of the water and the Catskills beyond..." by Marie Doyon
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"The Bard gardens, normally filled with Bard LLI members this time of year, are afflicted with two major challenges. One is COVID-19. The other is restoration. Both affect us in unique and important ways..." by Gary Miller
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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 spring!
🌿 🌿 🌿
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