Along tree-lined Locust Walk

This spring, the University’s Division of Facilities & Real Estate Services (FRES) is organizing a celebration of gardens and meadows, fields and walks and trees and lawns that make up Penn’s urban campus. The Office of the University Architect oversees the planning and design of Penn’s landscape features and, in collaboration with FRES Operations & Maintenance Department, manages the care of its green spaces. Their efforts have earned the University a number of awards including a Sustainable SITES Certification, and for the eighth year in a row, recognition as a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation.

Now, for the first time, Penn’s campus in West Philadelphia has received official designation as an arboretum by the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program. Penn is the first Ivy League university to achieve this accreditation. Penn is among 23 universities worldwide, six of which are urban, that have this designation. As the Arboretum at The University of Pennsylvania, ArbNet recognizes the collective efforts that have achieved particular standards of professional practices deemed important for arboreta and botanic gardens.

Here are some of the campus activities this spring that will recognize Penn’s landscapes (Almanac April 11, 2017):

Saturday, April 22: Earth Day—An annual event designed to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

Wednesday, April 26: 30x30 Challenge Campus Ecology Tour— The tour will start at noon at Shoemaker Green, in front of the Palestra. Register to attend this tour.

Friday, April 28: Arbor Day and celebration of Penn as a Tree Campus USA—For the eighth year in a row, Penn has been named a Tree Campus USA, by a national program created in 2008 by the Arbor Day Foundation to honor colleges and universities for effective campus forest management and for engaging staff and students in conservation goals. At 1 p.m., Bob Lundgren, landscape architect, and Chloe Cerwinka, landscape planner, will lead a tour of campus highlighting our most historic and interesting trees. Register for the tour.

Tuesday, May 2: Penn Park Orchard Continues to Grow—Established in fall 2014, it is now more than 6,000 square feet and includes 25 fruit trees, more than 65 edible shrubs, vines and berry bushes along with thousands of perennials planted throughout. Help plant more perennial flowers, herbs and groundcovers to complete the new food forest understory at the Penn Park Orchard, noon to 3 p.m. Organized in partnership with the Philadelphia Orchard Project. Sign up on the Project's website.

Thursday, May 4: Creating Canopy program—To encourage the continual greening of our communities in the Greater Philadelphia area, Penn is partnering with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation for the Creating Canopy tree giveaway. University and UPHS employees can register now, on a first-come, first-served basis for a tree.

Here are some of the tours available online and on campus:

Appreciating Penn’s Cherry Trees—Led by Tony Aiello, director of horticulture and curator at Morris Arboretum, a full identification and inventory will be taken of all the various cherry trees on Penn’s campus. Mr. Aiello will use his extensive knowledge of flowering cherry trees to identify the exact cherry cultivars on the Penn campus, and continue to help Penn grow its flowering cherry tree collection, so that the cherry tree collection can become known for its cultural legacy, horticultural display, research and education. View a photo album with a sampling of Cherry Trees.

Tour Penn’s Class Trees—A Class Tree Tour has been added to the Penn Plant Explorer, an interactive website, linked to Penn’s comprehensive tree inventory (6,500+ trees), that allows users to map and interpret the significant trees, specialty gardens, urban parks, edible plants and seasonal interest throughout Penn’s campus. Class trees have been planted since 2011, thanks to the sponsorship of Wharton alumnus Bill Hohns, W ’74. See Penn Plant Explorer.

Spring Tree Plantings—Each spring, FRES landscape architects collaborate with the Morris Arboretum to select a number of trees for planting on Penn’s West Philadelphia campus. Tree species are selected to ensure tree diversity and also to test how some trees fare in an urban environment. Among those planted will be the live oak trees that have been nurtured for a few years by the careful hands at Morris Arboretum, introducing this species to the campus for the first time, as climate change pushes its planting zone further north. In addition to those from Morris Arboretum, spring 2017 will bring to campus an assortment of oaks (white oaks, chestnut oaks, post oaks), yellowwoods, sugar maples, American beech, hickory, sassafras and a hardy rubber tree.

Tree Tags–Telling the Tree’s Story—Tree tags can help many of us learn more about a campus tree that has caught our eye. This spring, our landscape team will begin installing tree tags—small (3x5 or 4x6) plaques that give its Latin name, describe the tree’s origin, and on larger tags, an interesting fact about the tree.

Look for these tags at eye height on campus trees at the end of April.