SUMMER 2022 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND SEASONS
Stachys officinalis ‘Pink Cotton Candy’ is a perennial that bridges the gap between spring and summer. Upright flowering stems rise above an attractive foliage clump from late May through July. This species has vivid flowers which can provide a spectacular display. 'Pink Cotton Candy' was bred by Richard Hawke from an open pollinated betony seedling and introduced by the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2009. The flowers are two tones of pink.
Thank CylburnExecutivePatriciayou.Foster,DirectorArboretum Friends
Rudbeckia maxima, commonly called large coneflower, is a coarse perennial native to the United States that blooms throughout the summer. Impressively, its flower stalks grow up to seven feet tall! Ours can be found in the Circle Garden where we leave the stalks in place after bloom so that goldfinches can enjoy the seed.
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– Monty Don HaveWelcome!youheard the expression “sense of place”? A cursory search on the Internet produces more than a billion (3.5 billion, to be exact) references to the phrase. Science Direct defines it thus: “a sense of place is the emotions someone attaches to an area based on their experiences.” Can you guess where this is headed?
This is the peoples’ place, the garden where everyone can come: to marvel at the intoxicating mysteries of the natural world and learn how to respect it. Stop by and visit the construction site for the Nature Education Center. It is really happening, made possible by friends like you.
I have most often heard the phrase used to describe the goal of landscape design. Creating a place that involves all the senses is key to a successful landscape, but how would that happen in a public space? During the pandemic we noticed that people flocked to Cylburn and for them it was beautiful, peaceful, constant, and being here made them feel whole. Wow! It is an honor and a privilege for Cylburn Arboretum Friends to partner with Recreation and Parks to provide this place to the people of Baltimore where they can experience a sense of place, where they can immerse themselves and use all their senses (although we do discourage foraging). Have your dialogue with nature and discover the sound of grasses being tossed by the summer breezes. Catch the subtle scent of magnolia in the late summer afternoons. Prepare for the coming explosion of color in the dahlia garden. Sit on the cool stone bench at the edge of the Moudry Woods. This issue of Seasons showcases our efforts to reach out to our community. We are fortunate to be surrounded on all sides by communities that define Baltimore City writ large. To be at the center of these diverse neighborhoods gives us a wonderful sense of place. And our role as neighbor drives us to open the gates and invite all to enter.
“When you appallingatstressful,futureinvestsomething,plantyouinabeautifulamidstachaoticand,times,downrightworld”
1 CONTENTS EDUCATIONNATURECENTERGARDENPAGE2 CYLBURN DOCENTS PAGE 4 A NEW PAGEEXPERIMENTGROUNDSARBORETUMCYLBURNMAPPAGE6FOR8 MARKET DAY REPORTPAGE10 YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT CYLBURNPENNEYAARBORETUM!PAGE11PLEAFROMHUBBARDPAGE12 NATURE EDUCATION CENTER UPDATE PAGE 13 MARK YOUR CALENDAR BACK8COVER 10 12 6 2 BOARD OF DIRECTORS Rebecca NellJackDouglasRameshJoMaryellynSorrelMaeSandraAlanEmilyBeverlyWillLindaMariayneTreasurerRobertSecretaryHillesViceNancyPresidentHenryB.HillPresidentWhedbeeA.CookBrodnickiWrightButlerClemensDavisDillonGilbertP.GohnHinnantKingLynottMiddleditchMoorthyNelsonOwensB.Strachan EX OFFICIO Melissa Grim Chief Horticulturist, Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks Colleen Vacelet Owner, Intreegue Design SEASONS is published by Cylburn Arboretum Friends Written and edited by Patricia ExecutiveFosterDirector Brooke M. Fritz Director of Development Erika BillHeadBrentEducationCastilloDirectorFiglestahlerGardenerGeenen|Communication Design Layout and Design 4 4915 Greenspring Ave. Baltimore, MD 21209 Info@cylburn.org Phone: (410) 367-2217 Cylburn.org
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Colleen and her team started with the guiding idea of “uncovering the hidden world” as they worked to envision a garden that was rooted in the land and connected to Cylburn. For example, an existing Catalpa tree will sit at the heart of the garden and a hammock lounge will be strategically placed so that visitors will be encouraged to look up into its branches. The landscape and plant palette at the front of the garden will be more structured than the center of the garden which will be composed of ferns and native plants. By the time you wind your way down to the pathway you will be pushed out into the trailhead and the actual wild wood.
Colleen Vacelet, the founder of Intreegue Design, grew up spending time on her family’s sawmill playing in sawdust. Her certifications include licensed Landscape Architect, Certified Arborist and Horticulturist – so working on the design for the new Nature Education Center garden is a “full circle” project that she loves. We are excited for Intreegue Design to implement its plan in the new space this coming year! The garden just outside of the Nature Education Center will be more than just a pretty landscape or a collection of stone pavers and walking paths. The garden will be designed to transition visitors from the built environment into the natural landscape.
GARDEN
From recycled “fallen Cylburn wood” benches, to a stormwater plan that is designed to improve water quality on the grounds, to displays of plants that thrive in our region—the garden will be a space that enhances the Cylburn property. Colleen first enjoyed Cylburn Arboretum as a walking place when she lived in Northwest Baltimore before she realized all that the property has to offer. Now she hopes that city residents enjoy the future result of her team’s work and that it will enhance nature education for everyone who visits Cylburn.
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Design
Renderings and plan by Intreegue
Docents Elevate the Experience at Cylburn
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At some point in your life, you have probably enjoyed a museum and perhaps even engaged with a museum docent: that person who is part tour guide, part art or science or history lover, and most probably a volunteer. Museum educators play an important role in giving visitors tools to contextualize, approach, and appreciate the museum content. With a tree museum, there is also a valuable role for docents to play at Cylburn Arboretum. This past fall, we refreshed our volunteer docent training program with a focus on increasing our capacity to host large school groups at the arboretum. It has been fantastic to watch! With the help of our volunteers, we have been able to break up large groups into smaller sub-groups led by (or assisted by) a docent. This allows for highly interactive experiences for visiting students. Some of our docents are retired educators and lawyers, some are gardeners, naturalists, literary artists, and interior designers. They have brought a broad array of knowledge and perspectives to our field trips, while sharing in a common love of Ournature.docents have shared with us that they care about Cylburn, specifically, for a variety of reasons. To bring them all together: it is a beautiful, unique, inspiring, accessible, wild, green space in a city full of trees and wildlife. In one docent’s words, “I think the Cylburn Arboretum is a refuge in the middle of a busy city that offers a beautiful and peaceful space for all of us to enjoy and explore.”
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2) A wish to expand young people’s appreciation and respect for Cylburn and the natural world and a hope that they will return with their family.
3) A yearning for a way to serve Cylburn and our greater community as a volunteer. Yearning to serve is what keeps many of our docents engaged. One shared, “I love being part of this community and sharing stewardship and a love of caring for nature and natural sciences with others.” A student’s experience can be transformed into something far richer with the assistance of a docent. Guides with their own expertise, who help to draw attention to things that they care about personally, make our field trips more intimate and fun.
In the words of our Education Director, Erika, “I could not do my work this way without our volunteer docents. It would be a completely different trip and experience for our students. The love that they share is what helps us to provide an interactive and engaging experience, but it also gives us space to move more slowly and allow everyone to experience the peace and tranquility of Cylburn.”
1)same:Apersonal desire to learn more, and share that learning with others.
When we asked, “What motivated you to become a Volunteer Cylburn Docent?” there was a range of answers, but the themes were the
6 SEASONS Our new map, created by intern Dannie Dzialo, is available to pick up and use for exploring. You can find them at map kiosks throughout the grounds.
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GroundsExperimentationfor
By Brent “Fig” Figlestahler
Gardening, equal parts craft and science, lends itself to informal experimentation. The curious gardener is sure to find plenty of observable variables and differing results in any attempt at growing living things. Which soil preparation has proven most successful when planting from year to year, or merely tracking rainfall accumulation, are both simple examples of informal garden data tracking. It’s simultaneously a blessing, challenge, and curse to develop one’s own practices that work well in each garden context. Cylburn Arboretum lends itself to observation and trialing. As we go about our daily work, we are continuously asking questions and supporting Cylburn’s identity as an outdoor laboratory both for the passive observer and the active researcher. Cylburn Arboretum’s least common denominator is its identity as a public park and urban “greenspace.'' We have no pool, no ball courts, and we don’t allow kite flying to name a few of our differentiating qualities. However, Cylburn does have unusual offerings that make this mass of trees different from Baltimore’s other great parks. In addition to its cultivated areas and unique collection of specimen trees, Cylburn offers the public as well as outside institutions a living laboratory from which to build knowledge. Part of our charge as an arboretum is displaying trees in an observable context over time. By keeping track of our trees and their growth benchmarks we inadvertently compile data that will be of future value when studying things such as climate change. When we move our lens farther from the cultivated area, taking into focus Cylburn’s wooded edges, the property offers a tremendous opportunity to study the differences between cultivated and wild conditions. That same lens on Cylburn can be moved even further afield than the property boundaries to offer perspective on urban woodlands and the role of greenspaces within cities. No matter which perspective is chosen, Cylburn is, and has long been, fertile ground for experimentation and study. Each of the previously mentioned lenses has attracted research and study over the years. The following is a list of research initiatives between Cylburn Arboretum and other collaborators that may not be apparent even to the careful observer.
The Cylburn woodland has been home to a study of the rooting behavior of the Beebee Tree (Tetradium daniellii ). This was in conjunction with the Maryland Invasive Plant Advisory Committee (IPAC).
Cylburn has long been a stop for local botany and various tree identification classes. It would be hard to count the number of classes that have visited our grounds for tree identification purposes.
NOAA Since Cylburn’s earliest days as an arboretum, Cylburn has been a data collection site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Remote weather monitoring stations track and transmit data from Cylburn to NOAA.
Maryland DNR
University of Maryland: Emerald Ash Borer
Goucher College An ecology class from Goucher utilized our deer-fenced perimeter to study the effects of herbivory on local flora inside and outside a deer exclosure. UMBC Cylburn is currently home to a UMBC graduate student researching pollution in Baltimore through bat guano using Cylburn as a study site due to our location and density of trees and bat habitat.
flagship demonstration gardens is at Cylburn Arboretum, flanked by a demonstration rain garden which has also been the site of a pollinator study.
Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is a serious threat to Maryland ash trees. It has killed many millions of ash trees across the Midwest and Eastern U.S. This study is testing the effects of parasitic wasps as a means of biological control.
Morgan State University, Towson University, and GeorgeUniversityWashington
Baltimore City Master Gardeners UME Master Gardeners educate communities.gardens,practicessustainablesafe,residentsBaltimoreabouteffective,andhorticulturaltobuildhealthylandscape,andOneoftheir
United States Forest Service/University of Delaware Cylburn is getting ready to embark on a long-term study of climate resiliency in White (Q. alba) and Chestnut (Q. prinus) Oaks. In partnership with the USFS, University of Delaware, and BCRP, Cylburn will be a home to an acorn orchard comprised of hundreds of oak seedlings. As trees are selected for climate change resilient traits, Cylburn will be left with a mature oak grove of lasting importance. Cylburn Arboretum brings a unique value to Baltimore City and the surrounding region. Beautifully, Cylburn’s curriculum vitae is not exclusively her own. Cylburn’s value is amplified through collaboration with outside institutions. In this way Cylburn acts as the catalyst for all types of learning. The effort that goes into creating an environment supportive of study and research can easily appear invisible when compared with the physical presence of swimming pools and recreation centers but in light of Baltimore City’s current social, economic, and infrastructural challenges, the value of Baltimore’s green infrastructure cannot be overstated.
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We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who helped to make Market Day a success! The event is a lovely community tradition, but it is also a vital fundraiser for the Cylburn Arboretum Friends. Thank you all for coming out to support us in so many different ways. As a small nonprofit organization, we would not be able to put on Market Day without the support of our sponsors. We deeply appreciate Capital Funding Group, DLA Piper and North Hill Tree Experts for all of their support! MARKET DAY 2022 REPORT THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS Photos by Bryan Vana 10 SEASONS
Recently we shared a survey through our monthly e-newsletter (you can sign up to receive if at https://cylburn.org/contact/ if you are not on our mailing list). We are so grateful to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey! Your responses will help us to identify priorities to consider as we continue to grow. We thought you might enjoy hearing some of the kind thoughts people had to share about this place that we all love: “I love the space and it is always interesting to see what is blooming or growing in the gardens. I always leave with new ideas for what I might grow or how I might arrange things in my home space to better effect.”
“Cylburn Arboretum is a great place to let the kids run around and learn about nature. It is our most frequented place to visit. We love it!”
“I enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of Cylburn Arboretum and your commitment to teaching about and encouraging appreciation of our natural surroundings.”
“What a wonderful uncrowded, outdoor space for walking and nature observation. During my last visit with my 4-yr-old grandson, we enjoyed a blooming pomegranate, lengthy observation of a resting garter snake, and an inchworm exploring his arms.”
Your Thoughts about Cylburn Arboretum!
“I enjoy peaceful walks in your quiet woods and lovely gardens. Benches in the shade or sun (depending on the weather) for observing nature or reading and freedom in outdoor space.”
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A number of years ago, Penney first came to know Cylburn Arboretum while she was getting a certificate in landscape design from George Washington University. One of the most extensive courses focused on plant identification; the instructor and class would visit Cylburn Arboretum to identify trees.
Penney Hubbard, who you might know because of her glorious garden on Walnut Hill Lane in Ruxton, recently sat with us and shared the plea that she makes to others – support Cylburn Arboretum Friends!
As a garden lover, Penney enjoys visiting various gardens, but her support of Cylburn goes beyond just enjoying the grounds. “My husband and I have always thought that access to open space is really important in an urban environment. Not everyone has the privilege to travel to different gardens like we do, and Cylburn is a space that the city can be proud of – a space for the citizens of Baltimore.”
“To have that much protected land in an urban setting is remarkable,” said Penney. “The tree collection is terrific, but it is even more impressive because it is in a public space within the city—accessible to everyone.”
The Hubbards have always been supportive of Cylburn Arboretum Friends. A few years ago, they donated a sculpture, created by local artist Matthew Harris. “New Dawn” is a beautiful addition to Cylburn Arboretum that visitors frequent. More recently, the Hubbards gave a gift to support the future Nature Education Center. “The other thing we feel strongly about is education for young people,”
A PLEA PENNEYFROMHUBBARD
“There are a lot of ways to give money and try to support Baltimore City but giving to Cylburn is a wonderful way to do it with no political agenda. You know that if you are supporting Cylburn Arboretum, your gift will go to creating and maintaining a beautiful space for the community and the city,” said Penney.
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“Be generous because your support is a wonderful way to make a statement about the future of open spaces, nature education and public access to the rich resources of our natural world.”
Penney was impressed with the grounds and collections at that time and has continued to visit over the years at various garden club events hosted on the grounds of Cylburn.
From left: Leigh Hubbard, Hadley Hubbard Fiess, Penney and A.C. Hubbard, Chris Fiess. Photo by Alan Gilbert Photos by Alan Gilbert
said Penney, “I love that there are so many ways for people to learn at Cylburn –through partner organizations like the Horticulture Society of Maryland or through programs that Cylburn Arboretum Friends offers. The opportunity for young people to learn more about nature, gardening, and plants – all the things that we love about the natural world – is special and worthy of investment.” Penney echoed a common sentiment of other Cylburn Arboretum supporters, “I hope that there continues to be a broader knowledge and appreciation of Cylburn Arboretum. Be generous because your support is a wonderful way to make a statement about the future of open spaces, nature education and public access to the rich resources of our natural world.”
For those of you who are eager to follow along with the Nature Education Center construction, the work has started. Some images of our progress to date. We can’t wait to show you more this fall!
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THANK YOU We can’t thank you enough for being part of our community at Cylburn Arboretum Friends—your support and participation is the foundation of our success. Looking for more ways to be involvoed? LEARN MORE Do you know someone who would enjoy being a member as much as you? The Gift of Cylburn Gift certificates are available HERE SEPTEMBER 1: CYLBURN GARDEN CLUB SEPTEMBER 2: CYLBURN DOCENT TRAINING SEPTEMBER 7: TREE TIME FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN (AGES 2-5) SEPTEMBER 21: WEDNESDAY WALK OCTOBER 5: TREE TIME FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN (AGES 2-5) OCTOBER 6: CYLBURN GARDEN CLUB OCTOBER 19: WEDNESDAY WALK OCTOBER 28-29: ARBOORETUM AND ARBREWRETUM MARK YOUR CALENDAR 4915 GREENSPRING AVENUE BALTIMORE, MD 21209
