From plant nerds to community builders: The first 30 years of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum

By James H. Locklear

I’ve been director of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum (NSA) for almost 15 years, and I still have a hard time explaining, in a nutshell, exactly what it is we do. Marketing people tell us we need an “elevator speech,” a short, compelling summary that brings tears to the eyes and money from the pocket, but it just hasn’t come to me yet. So I appreciate the opportunity to tell the story of this remarkable, uniquely Nebraskan enterprise here in the pages of Prairie Fire.

Folks who live in Nebraska—“the home of Arbor Day”—usually recognize that an arboretum has something to do with trees. Certainly the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum is about trees; we were established in 1978 as a public/private partnership between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, Inc., a nonprofit membership organization, to create arboretums across the state where a variety of trees would be planted, tested and enjoyed.

But the founders of NSA had even bigger things in mind. Surprisingly, the word “tree” does not appear at all in our articles of incorporation. Instead the founders used the much more expansive word “flora,” which encompasses all kinds of plants—trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, grasses, etc. Intended or not, this word choice was profoundly appropriate because, whether in the wild or in cultivation, trees grow best in the context of other plants, that is, in communities of plants.

And, if I may be permitted the leap, so do people.

What began 30 years ago as an effort of a small group of plant nerds has evolved into a coalition of community builders, environmental stewards and others who love the land. We still have plenty of plant nerds in the fold (my staff and me included), but we now see trees and other plants as the means and not the end.

Taking the arboretum to the people

Leave it to Nebraskans to come up with a populist approach to public horticulture.

The conditions that affect the growth of trees and other plants vary tremendously across this state. Think of the differences between Brownville, tucked into the forested folds of the Missouri River valley in southeast Nebraska, and Alliance, plunked down on the High Plains of the panhandle. Annual precipitation, length of growing season, winter temperatures, elevation, wind, humidity, soil chemistry—these things and more affect plant survival and growth. You can grow magnolias in Brownville, but you’ll have better luck with buffalograss in Alliance.

And therein lies the impetus behind NSA—the simple fact that most people are not content with buffalograss. We love trees, and when you live in prairie country, you have to plant trees. Yet the average person doesn’t have the luxury of time or resources to plant a bunch of trees and then wait to see what lives. That’s what an arboretum is for.

It was apparent to the founders of NSA that an arboretum in Brownville would have little relevance to a person in Alliance, and the result was the groundbreaking concept of a statewide arboretum. They would take the arboretum to the people, dispersed in communities across the state, making it both accessible and relevant.

The first affiliate site of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum was Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City, famous as the former estate of J. Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day. Today, NSA is a network of 86 arboretums, historic landscapes and other public gardens located in 50 host communities across the state. Ironically, or maybe poetically, one of our most recent affiliates is the Kimball Community Arboretum. Located at opposite ends of the state, one developed on the estate of a wealthy businessman, the other on the grounds of the county fair, there could hardly be two more different places in Nebraska. Yet each arboretum serves as a place of beauty, education and inspiration in its community.

Plants for the Plains

I, for one, am glad the whole Lewis-and-Clark thing is over. The nation began celebrating the bicentennial of the monumental Lewis and Clark Expedition even before its official start date in 2003, and by the time it concluded in 2006 we were all ready to move on to something else.

In 1807, a year after the expedition arrived back in St. Louis, Meriwether Lewis was in Philadelphia sorting through his specimens, maps and journals. Among the collections he brought back from the untrammeled reaches of the young United States were stacks of dried plant specimens, collected mostly by Lewis himself. The captain of President Jefferson’s celebrated Corps of Discovery, the leader of the greatest enterprise in American history, was a plant nerd.

Or at least he became one, thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who arranged a crash course in all things botanical for Lewis before the expedition set out, taught by some of the best botanists and horticulturists in Philadelphia. Lewis, the military man, paid attention to plants because Jefferson, the president, was passionate about plants.

Jefferson is famously quoted as saying, “The greatest service a man may do for his country is the introduction of a useful plant.” He once wrote an acquaintance that after he returned to Monticello from his stint in the White House, “…I believe I shall become a florist.”

Jefferson would have loved the NSA GreatPlants program, and I like to imagine that he would have come out each year for one of our plant sales, browsing through the offerings of trees, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses, many of which have been discovered and propagated by NSA horticulturists.

A partnership between NSA and the Nebraska Nursery & Landscape Association, the GreatPlants for the Great Plains program has introduced 26 new trees, shrubs and wildflowers into commercial nursery production, making them available to Nebraska landscapers and gardeners. The program emphasizes plants that are native to this region, not only because they are hardy and require less water to grow but because they bring a “sense of place” to the landscape. We’ve come to call this the “Nebraska Style”—an approach to landscaping that reflects the unique beauty and character of the native plant communities of the state, from the oak woodlands of eastern Nebraska to the ponderosa pine savannas of the Pine Ridge to the several types of prairie communities in between.

Every town a garden

If you’ve been to Chicago recently, you’ve probably noticed the effort underway to make this great city a green city. Mayor Daley aims to make Chicago the most environmentally friendly city in the world, and the creation, renovation and enrichment of public landscapes, from parks to schools to roadways to the roof of city hall, are key elements in his environmental agenda. The mayor is taking seriously the official but until recently forgotten motto of Chicago, stamped in Latin onto the city’s corporate seal in 1837, “Urbs in Horto”—City in a Garden. And his efforts are paying dividends in terms of community revitalization and economic development.

In a similar manner, the vision of NSA has expanded over the years from tree planting to garden-making. Beginning in the mid-1980s with a partnership with the Peter Kiewit Foundation of Omaha, NSA began making matching grants available for public landscaping projects. A nearly continuous stream of grant funds have been available since, involving other valued partners including the Nebraska Forest Service, the Nebraska Department of Roads and The Nebraska Environmental Trust. The projects implemented with these funds typically involve trees but also often include beds of shrubs and sweeps of wildflowers and grasses.

Looking back, the statistics are rather staggering. Since 1986, over $7 million in matching grants has been delivered through these partnerships to more than 250 Nebraska communities for public landscaping projects involving parks, schools, libraries, courthouses, hospitals, museums, fairgrounds, business districts and other places important to community life. Conserving water in the landscape plus reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers have become important aims, making these landscapes environmentally and economically sustainable.

The total value of these projects is now approaching $15 million, but that is not the most moving aspect of this body of work. Space does not allow me to recount landfills turned into parks, railroad sidings converted to arboretums, historic but weathered cemeteries renewed and a host of other compelling stories. And magnifying all of this good is the ripple effect many of these nearly 900 public landscaping projects have had throughout their communities, setting a positive tone for subsequent civic improvements.

Borrowing from the windy city, we’ve recently adopted the motto Every Town a Garden. While the specific challenges facing Nebraska communities are considerably different from Chicago’s, our cities, towns and villages have revitalization and economic development needs of their own. Beautiful, sustainable public landscapes won’t solve all of the problems, but they help make our communities more livable and viable.

Village greening

Nowhere is the issue of community viability more crucial than in Nebraska’s smallest towns, particularly our rural villages. According to the Nebraska Department of Economic Develop­ment, the official definition of a village is a community with more than 100 and less than 800 residents. Surprisingly, of the 532 incorporated communities in our state, 384 are villages. That’s 72 percent! Nebraska is a place of small places.

Diller and Ohiowa easily fit the official definition of a village. Diller of Jefferson County has 217 residents. Ohiowa of Fillmore County has 142. Both face their share of the challenges common to all rural communities in the Great Plains—keeping young people in town; keeping businesses on Main Street (which in Ohiowa is gravel!).

With partial funding from the Nebraska Community Enhancement Program, a joint effort of the Nebraska Forest Service, the Nebraska Department of Roads and NSA, and with design assistance from NSA staff, Diller and Ohiowa have created miniparks on their main streets. Both projects involved taking unsightly vacant lots with dilapidated buildings, cleaning them up and landscaping with trees, shrubs and beds of perennials. What were once eyesores are now places of beauty where weddings, community reunions and other gatherings occur. Though small, both projects stand as expressions of community hope, optimism and pride.

These small-town miniparks are representative of the nearly 900 public landscaping projects NSA has helped bring to fruition across the state—good, green work that has earned national admiration. In June NSA received the 2008 Urban Beautification Award from the American Horticultural Society in recognition of “significant contributions to urban horticulture and the beautification of American cities,” presented at the Great American Gardeners Awards Ceremony and Banquet in Washington, D.C.

Losing it on Arbor Day

The work of NSA of necessity begins with plants and places, but it is ultimately about people. This hit me with unexpected emotional force a couple of years ago when I was speaking to members of the Omaha Council of Garden Clubs at their annual Arbor Day celebration.

Everything was going smoothly until I started to tell the group about my experience, three days earlier, at the Arbor Day celebration of the Lincoln Regional Center. The Lincoln Regional Center is a psychiatric hospital run by the state of Nebraska. It provides services to people who, because of mental illness, require a structured treatment setting. Among its clientele are emotionally disturbed adolescents and adults suffering from mental illness or severe behavior disorders. It also is a corrections facility where sex offenders are incarcerated for treatment.

The Lincoln Regional Center is a hard, sad place. It also is an affiliate site of NSA.

The Regional Center celebrated Arbor Day with a traditional tree-planting ceremony. The entire campus is an arboretum and is beautifully landscaped with a great diversity of trees, shrubs and flower gardens. It has been maintained with loving care for over 30 years by horticulturist Dave Nicklas. A few people, including me, made comments appropriate to the day, then we went for a walk. I slipped into the middle of the group of about 40 people and quietly participated in the 20-minute stroll.

I was recounting this story to the Omaha garden club folks when I lost it. I’d been talking about the work of NSA for years, but this was the first time I ever got choked up. It took me awhile to regain composure.

I had been surrounded on that walk by a cross section of the world’s most broken people—men and women, boys and girls, who were there not because they wanted to be but because they suffered from mental illness. Some had even done harm to others. Yet, caring people had created a place of beauty and shelter around them. If the greatness of a society is revealed in how it cares for its weakest, then the Lincoln Regional Center Arboretum is one of the jewels in our crown.

Being kind to small places

I was initially embarrassed about my emotional, nonprofessional lapse but have since gotten over it. Every arboretum created, every aging park renewed, every schoolyard made shadier, every nursing home made more inviting is an act of kindness. And given the demographics of Nebraska, most of these are small acts of kindness, at least in terms of scale and scope. Kentucky farmer-poet Wendell Berry has suggested that a truly good society is one that is “kind to small places.” I think that’s what I’ve come to appreciate most about the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum. A lot of trees have been planted and landscapes created over the past 30 years, but the more stirring story is the multitude of small places that have been made even more beautiful and even more humane because this organization exists.

The Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Memberships and tax-deductible contributions help support the work of NSA in communities across Nebraska. For more information, call 402-472-2971 or visit the NSA Web site at arboretum.unl.edu.
 

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Delicious  •   Digg  •   StumbleUpon  •   Reddit  •   Facebook  •   Google  •   Yahoo  •   Technorati