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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | Published February 15, 2007

If students have ever found themselves stopping to smell the roses on the way to class, they will be quite pleased to learn about all the work that goes into maintaining what Garden Design magazine and others consider “the most beautiful campus in America.”

Established in 1929, the Scott Arboretum, named after Arthur Hoyt Scott, class of 1895, continues to utilize season-specific gardening techniques in order to prepare for the spring and summer, and is in the process of updating its administrative offices with a user-friendly touch screen kiosk that will enable visitors to prepare personal plant tours and search for the locations of specific plants.

According to Claire Sawyers, director of the Scott Arboretum, most of the gardening preparation for the spring entails “cleaning up the remnants of fall,” and making use of the downtime before spring arrives. This includes mulching, pruning, the switching of containers and ordering plants for the spring.

“We’ve been doing a lot of mulching lately,” Sheila Magee, a gardener for the Scott Arboretum, said. “It’s one of the things that we can do in the wintertime to improve the soil and keep the weeds down,” she said.

In addition, plant containers will be switched over and new plants will be obtained either from nurseries or ordered and delivered directly to the Arboretum. According to Magee, these new additions will be welcomed by the already vast collection of over 3,000 specimens on campus.

“We make a conscious effort not to cut up the gardens too fast and not get in too much of a hurry for spring,” Sawyers said. Instead, the staff of the Scott Arboretum arranges plants of “winter interest” to create a varied display garden that both showcases the seasonal horticulture and provides a natural habitat for birds and other wildlife on campus.

According to Sawyers, one project that is initiated by the Arboretum takes place “over the course of the winter” in Crum Woods. This work primarily consists of taking out exotic plants and replacing them with plants that work well with the surroundings.

“If you don’t take care of the desirable plants, then weed species will come in,” Sawyers said.

Perennial stem-cutting and other routines of garden maintenance are necessary activities that Arboretum staff undertake after the harshest weeks of winter have elapsed. According to Sawyers, this helps gardeners prepare for the “prime planting period,” which lasts roughly from March to May.

The staff of the Scott Arboretum has made the grounds more accessible to visitors than ever before with the installation of a new touch-screen kiosk that is centrally located in the Arboretum’s administrative offices.

The kiosk’s most important feature is the ability to create personalized tours that will direct any visitor to the specific locations featuring up to six plants of his or her choosing. This is done through a geographic information system (GIS) that spatially locates the designated plant and calculates the exact distance of each specimen from the kiosk.

For convenience, it lists and categorizes both common and scientific names of the plants, provides images of some of the plants on campus, numbers the chosen plants to indicate a suggested route, and prints out a personalized map as both a handy tour guide and piece of memorabilia.

According to Plants Records Supervisor Rhoda Maurer, “The screen sleeps with beautiful images of the Arboretum, which we hope will encourage visitors to walk up and touch the screen in order to start planning their visits.”

“I think it’s going to be a great tool, especially for those who don’t know the gardens,” Magee said. “If you had to wander around and look at every label, it would take a while. For those who are looking for something specific, it is very, very useful,” she said.

In addition to being a general guide for plants, the kiosk is especially useful for alumni attempting to locate a dedicated tree. The touch-screen keyboard allows visitors to input the name of the person to whom the tree was dedicated and pinpoint its location just like any other plant on campus. Eventually, benches on campus will also be added to the database. The kiosk was funded by a grant given to the Arboretum by the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust and a donation by Jack Blum.

In addition to its maintenance of the college campus, the Arboretum’s offices have established a membership program called Scott Associates made up of volunteers with a high level of interest in horticulture. For these members and other interested visitors, the offices administer lectures and workshops with content related to gardening.

“Our educational programs are really aimed at continuing education,” Sawyers said. Although the workshops are geared toward adult visitors, Sawyers said that students are encouraged to attend.

Part of the college’s image rests on the work accomplished by the Arboretum’s staff. “It is a matter of pride for us and a way of illustrating the values that the college holds, both in the college’s point of view and the arboretum’s point of view,” Sawyers said. “The college does get judged by its appearance. That’s the first impression that people have of this institution,” Sawyers said.

“When I visited for the first time, I was definitely struck by how beautiful the school was,” Elizabeth Hipple ‘10, office assistant in the Scott Arboretum’s administrative offices, said. “[The Arboretum] sets Swarthmore apart. It’s something extra and special about this place that perhaps other schools don’t have,” Hipple said.

According to Sawyers, there is a satisfied feeling in knowing that the Arboretum takes part in helping students come full circle in their time at the college. This is in reference to the plant give-away for incoming first-years during Orientation Week and the rosebud each graduating student picks from the Rose Garden before lining up for the procession. “I think that sets a really wonderful memory of that whole experience of being here,” Sawyers said.

The administrative offices of the Scott Arboretum and the new visitor’s kiosk are open and available from 8:30 a.m. to noon and 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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