What is an Arboretum?

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Published: 26 June 2020

"What is an arboretum?" is an often-asked question. Samantha, a staff member for our Arboretum on Wheels mobile classroom, will tell you a bit about what defines an arboretum.

=== Video Transcript ===

Hi everyone! My name is Sam and I'm an employee with the Arboretum on Wheels at the Boone County Arboretum. If you're unfamiliar with the Arboretum on Wheels, it is a mobile classroom unit that travels throughout the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky area and teaches a variety of hands-on environmental programming to students of all ages.

But today I am actually here at the Boone County Arboretum and I want to talk a little bit about what Arboretum actually is, so let's start with the word itself. "Arboretum" stems from Latin word "Arbor" which most of you probably know means "tree," and it roughly translates to "place of the trees." And if you can take a look around me that is still a pretty apt definition today.

You can kind of think of an arboretum as an outdoor living museum that's entirely dedicated to a diverse collection of tree and shrub species. In fact, here at the Boone County Arboretum, we actually have over 3600 different trees and shrubs. I'm standing today I'm just off the dogwood trail, in the Magnolia collection. I'm actually next to a very beautiful royal star magnolia, and I know this because throughout all of the Arboretum there are these little labels placed next to the tree and shrub specimens. And you can check a handy collection map [or online interactive version] located in any of our information kiosks throughout the Arboretum, to kind of reference and see what tree and shrubs are.

In addition to being a really beautiful peaceful place for a walk, the Arboretum is actually unique in that is a Level IV accredited arboretum. This accreditation is given out by the ArbNet Accreditation Program. Level IV is actually the highest accreditation level, and is a distinction that's held by a very few other facilities in our region. So we are incredibly fortunate to have this kind of resource in our community, and if you're nearby I encourage you to pop in to the Boone County Arboretum and check it out.