Arboretum Park Arbor Day Burke Grant Tree Planting

Spring is in the air! In only a few minutes at the Arboretum Park the sights and sounds of Spring surround you, invoking an overwhelming feeling of joy, and hope for the future. The birds are singing and feverishly building nests, the pollinators are fluttering about and the blue flag iris planted in Whittier’s Walk is blooming! The winged elms are flushing out new leaves and, best of all, there are more students, faculty and staff on campus.

While we are still anxiously awaiting the return in the Fall to full capacity, we are excited to see more activity here in the Arboretum’s Urban Park on a regular basis. The picnic tables in the park are often filled with people enjoying lunch outside and the newly planted “Sable Palm Hammock” landscape regularly has hammocks hung with visitors reading or just “hanging around” enjoying the beautiful weather.

The continued development of the impressive landscapes in the Arboretum Park, the eight-acre property where our office currently sits, has been successfully lead in no small part by two of our Learning by Leading (LxL) teams: Urban Horticulture and Bee Campus USA/Pollinator. The Urban Horticulture team designed and installed an Instagram Hotspot near one of the main entrances to the park near the propagation and green houses. This is the area where Hank Whittier, Ph.D., the Arboretum’s founding director, installed a turnstile to capture the number of visitors to the site. This new landscape will be ready for Spring graduation photos, and we know many students will take advantage of the beautiful space. This team is also continuing the work on Whitter’s Walk Phase III, which we hope to complete in the Fall.

In addition to the great work of the Urban Horticulture team, one of the returning interns on the Bee Campus USA/Pollinator team has taken the lead on the design of a new wildflower meadow on the Arboretum Park site. Both this new garden, along with an additional wildflower meadow designed and funded by the Audubon Society Knighthawks Chapter at UCF, will be installed by our Arboretum LxL students and volunteers, along with student volunteers from the Knighthawks as a prelude to our annual Arbor Day tree planting event on April 7, 2021.

This year we celebrate UCF’s tenth year as a recognized Tree Campus USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation. While the planting event is limited to students due to current campus COVID restrictions, we do invite our friends and supporters to join us afterwards from 12:00 to 12:30 for a fun and educational tour of the Arboretum Park that will include information about recent garden installations, future development, and, of course, the history of the UCF Arboretum. For additional information on how to register for the tour, refer to the flyer.