UT Gardens receive recognition, achieve certified arboretum status 

The UT Gardens have been named a level-three arboretum by the Tennessee Urban Forestry Council in cooperation with the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry. 

An arboretum is a place where trees and gardens are planted and maintained for educational and scientific purposes. 

The UT Gardens were one of 11 arboreta certified statewide in 2003. That status is achieved by applying to become an arboretum and meeting certain criteria: the gardens must be open to the public, have the number of trees proportionate to its level properly labeled and the trees must be appropriately maintained. 

Making the UT Gardens meet that criteria was "a collaborative project of urban forestry and the Tennessee Garden clubs, we also had some other volunteer workers," Jeff Web, graduate assistant and volunteer, said. "We had to make sure we had our trees properly named and the correct number to be named an arboretum." 

Susan Hamilton, director of the UT Gardens, approached Carolyn Crowder, a senior in public horticulture, to do an internship by identifying and labeling the trees so that the gardens could be certified. Crowder accepted and worked on the application for certification. 

"I worked on it for a number of months," Crowder said. "Some trees were already labeled that I just had to update or make new signs for and there were maps for those that weren't labeled. I had to research to see what they were." 

The title is a great honor that should attract more people to the gardens, Crowder said. 

"It's a distinction that puts your garden into a certain kind of elite group," James Newburn, UT Gardens curator, said. "It lets our visitors know that we're on top of things." 

People will visit the arboretum because they know they can see a variety of trees and decide which trees would work best as a part of their landscape, Newburn said. 

Level four is the highest level for an arboretum, requiring that at least 120 species of trees be labeled. 

Since the number of tree species in the gardens is increasing, the gardens should eventually become a level-four arboretum, Newburn said. 

The UT gardens are located near the entrance of the agricultural campus, span 10 acres and have 95 labeled tree species.