The Jean and Sidney Silber Teaching Garden

Cylburn Arboretum is Baltimore’s Arboretum – providing a unique learning environment. As a team we have focused management, pruning techniques, and the fostering of the best growing conditions. We have recently added a nursery space for propagating shared plants from other arboreta as well as our own materials, enabling us to further diversify the plant collections and enhance our benefits as a free community resource. The new garden attached to the Nature Education Center will offer learning opportunities throughout. Named the Jean and Sidney Silber Teaching Garden, it will invite visitors to observe, learn, contemplate and enjoy the setting. The garden is named for Jean and Sidney Silber, titans of the greater

Baltimore world of gardens and horticulture. Their many years of generosity in sharing their own garden, giving away plants, conducting tours and explaining the plants endlessly to visitors and friends encapsulates the spirit of the new Silber garden.

The front area of the garden will feature new and unique plant material to the Cylburn collection as a whole. For example, Juke Box® xPyracomeles will be an exciting addition. It is new to the market and is derived by crossing two genera—Pyracantha and Osteomeles. It is an attractive evergreen that can be used as a boxwood alternative. As an historic property with boxwood hedges, what a wonderful teaching tool to be able to compare the two when speaking to horticulture interns and garden club visitors.

Another exciting addition to the front section of the garden will be two sweetgum trees,

Liquidambar styraciflua 'Clydesform'. The beauty of this cultivar is its narrow form, as it only grows twelve feet wide, plus it has tremendous fall color. As a public city garden, we feel it’s important to highlight trees that are good for city dwellers. This cultivar is compact with sturdy upright branches, ideal for a busy city street. Also, because it grows more slowly than most sweet gum trees, it does not typically outgrow its space.

The Silber garden will provide the setting and array of different kinds of plants needed for both formal and informal gardening and horticulture instruction, and reflects the energy, enthusiasm and love of nature that the Silbers embodied. It is truly a fitting legacy, and we honor and thank Jean Silber for her latest gift in support of Cylburn Arboretum Friends.