Continued from the previous page.
3 p.m. The lunch crowd has gone back inside, and gardeners assigned to the arboretum from the campus's Grounds Division are finishing the day's work of planting and irrigating. An art studio class is sketching in the Mediterranean section near Putah Creek Lodge; two mothers watch as their toddlers feed bread crusts to the omnipresent ducks. Warmed by the sun, the lavender, rosemary and sage mingle their sweet and pungent fragrances; in the redwood grove, it's cool and quiet.
By fiscal year 1972-73, perhaps in large measure a result of the tremendous support of the campus and the Friends, the arboretum was allocated roughly $16,000 in state funds. An Arboretum Work Group was established in 1972, charged with setting goals and evaluating the effectiveness of the facility. John Tucker, the arboretum's acting director in 1965, now succeeded Grady Webster as permanent director.
Having begun so ominously for the arboretum, the 1970s soon saw a resurgence in activity that carried on into the '80s. Tucker began developing the arboretum not only as a research facility but also as a significant teaching resource. Classes in environmental horticulture, botany, physical education, ecology and art were among those that used the arboretum's collections or venue for class work. An outdoor education program began providing local elementary schools with a natural setting for field trips; by 1976, 1,500 elementary school students yearly were taking advantage of the program. Mary Major, the arboretum's coordinator for adult education, organized the Arboretum Docent Corps, which began leading tours for the general public.
Several new demonstration gardens were established during this time, including the Mary Wattis Brown Native Plant Collection (1977) and the Ruth Risdon Storer Garden (1980).
Kerry J. Dawson took the reins as arboretum director in 1985. Dawson, a professor of landscape architecture, was instrumental in the arboretum's emergence as a key element in the campus's long-range development plan. Dawson's tenure also saw the arboretum gain a more stable financial footing, with additional money available for staff. Joining the director and curator (both half-time positions) and a full-time superintendent were a part-time program director, a nursery manager, a head gardener and an administrative manager.
Warren Roberts '64, M.S. '69, has been the arboretum's superintendent since 1972; when Director Dawson left in 1992, Roberts took on the additional role of acting director. Perhaps more than any other single individual, Roberts knows the arboretum as if it were his own back yard, and perhaps even better than most people know their own back yards. Every week he accompanies a groundskeeper assigned to a particular section of the arboretum as they inspect the plants and the surrounding area. Writing on a clipboard, Roberts makes small, tightly spaced notes about what needs attention and checks off the tasks that have been done since the last inspection tour. He sees everything, and he's a treasure-trove of history and anecdotes relating to the arboretum. He'll tell you, for instance, that the cypress and deodar cedar on the southwest corner of Mrak Hall Drive and Old Davis Road were planted in the mid-1800s near the house of George Briggs. Briggs was a farmer who irrigated his fields with water stored in a reservoir he had built with the help of Jesse Rowe, another Davisville pioneer; the reservoir, whose worn concrete walls can be seen south of the path just east of Putah Creek Lodge, remains the oldest known man-made reservoir in the Central Valley.
Roberts and the rest of the staff are spending a good deal of time these days updating the arboretum's master plan. After they complete an extensive review and evaluation of current conditions, several public workshops will be held to share what's been learned and to hear how the arboretum's audiences see its mission and potential; the revised master plan will follow, accompanied by what the arboretum staff hopes will be a realistic fund-raising strategy that will turn vision into reality.
Meanwhile, a number of new projects are in various stages of completion. Thanks in part to the development of Aggie Village on the former Aggie Villa site, the east end of the arboretum is undergoing a facelift. The north fork of Putah Creek, dry for more than eight years east of the old A Street bridge, now flows all the way to the basin at the foot of the dam. A new bicycle path will run through Aggie Village, connecting this part of the arboretum with B Street.
Plans for new demonstration gardens are taking shape, too:
* The Hydrozone Garden, an award-winning design from the arboretum's 1988 International Design Competition, will consist of research plots of ground covers suitable for the Central Valley; its design elements represent natural features found in the valley.
* The Californio Garden will replicate those found at ranchos of the first Spanish and Mexican settlers in California. The garden will be located just west of and adjacent to the old boathouse, with a fountain and a ramada, or pole arbor, as visual anchors. The disused boathouse is undergoing a transformation, too, into the arboretum's Environmental Education Center, with classroom and display space, an outdoor work area and a cutting garden for Indian craft plant supplies. The former boat dock will be converted to a viewing platform extending out into a "marsh" of native tules, sedges and cattails.
* The California Plant Communities Garden will highlight regional habitats in a naturalistic display, with an emphasis on Central Valley prairie species native to the arboretum site; most of these now exist in tiny, very vulnerable and fragmentary populations in the wild. This garden will focus on Native American horticultural practices and habitat protection.
These last two gardens are examples of a recent move among botanical gardens toward what are called ethnobotanical collections--gardens that focus on plants used by a variety of ethnic groups. In the case of the UC Davis arboretum, that means culinary and medicinal herbs used in the traditions of Mexico and the southwestern United States, North Africa and the Near East and Southeast Asia.
"Historically, botanical gardens were 'trophy gardens,'" said Diane Cary '78, M.Ed. '96, arboretum program director. "To survive and remain relevant and to attract a more diverse audience, we need to evolve away from being a curio cabinet for plants," she said. To that end, the ethnobotanical collections focus on traditional uses of plants--basketry, fiber, food and medicine. Along the way, these gardens preserve biodiversity, restore the natural landscape and provide a way for visitors to reconnect to the natural world.
Another long-range goal is development of a comprehensive computer mapping and data-management system that will track the arboretum's collections from the day each plant arrives. Sophisticated mapping software will be linked with an accessions database that will in turn link to planting, propagation, pest management and interpretation records and digitized images. Eventually, said Mary Burke '77, M.S. '79, arboretum curator and coordinator of this ambitious project, visitors will be able to search, for instance, for all California native plants that have purple flowers, do well in alkali soils and bloom in June, or all representatives of a particular genus of plant.
One of the themes identified in the campus's Long Range Development Plan is "Campus as Arboretum." In practical terms, this means that the campus takes every opportunity to create open space linked to the arboretum. "Our goal is visual connection from the central campus--a connection that encourages people to move more freely into the arboretum," said Bob Segar, campus planner. The arboretum also has influenced the general campus landscape, with the arboretum staff advising on types of plants to be included when new areas are developed.
7:30 p.m. Sunset is a quiet time in the arboretum. Spring evenings bring people out with their dogs for an after-dinner walk. The crows come home from their day working in the fields to the west of campus, jostling and cawing in the tops of the valley oaks that have grown along Putah Creek's banks for more than a century. Out near Shields Grove, a barn owl begins her evening hunt; in a few minutes, visitors to the Carolee Shields White Flower Garden will see it at its best--by the light of the nearly full moon.
