25 Years as the

State Arboretum of Virginia
 President Sullivan Makes First Visit to Blandy

UVa. President Teresa Sullivan, Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Doug Domenech, and founding FOSA Board Member Bob Lee were on hand for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Arboretum's designation as the State Arboretum of Virginia. Photos by Koy Mislowsky

By Martha Bjelland
 Director of FOSA

The Foundation of the State Arboretum's (FOSA) Board of Directors hosted University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan at a special event on June 11 marking the 25^th anniversary of the State Arboretum designation. 

President Sullivan

Against the handsome backdrop of The Tuleyries, FOSA Board President Bruce Downing welcomed over 125 guests. After thanking Mrs. Orme Wilson Jr. for her hospitality, and Mary and Don Shockey for their generosity in supporting this event, he introduced President Sullivan. Her remarks included a brief history of Blandy and the State Arboretum, and the University's commitment to science research and education outreach.

Click to watch video.

Following President Sullivan's remarks, founding FOSA board member Bob Lee shared the 'how' and 'why' of the State Arboretum designation, acknowledging all efforts to that end, including the late Andy Guest's role in shepherding the resolution through the Virginia Legislature in 1986.

Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources, Doug Domenech, offered congratulations to the State Arboretum on the 25th anniversary milestone, and asked the University of Virginia to consider placing part of Blandy Experimental Farm and the State Arboretum into a conservation easement to show its commitment to land conservation.

President Sullivan greets UVa. graduate students Stesha Dunker and Rosemary Malfi (back to camera). Stesha is sponsored by FOSA and Rosemary is sponsored by Mary and Don Shockey.

Following the brief program, guests were invited to tour the Tuleyries, the antebellum home of the late Graham Blandy, benefactor of Blandy Experimental Farm.

After the conclusion of the Tuleyries event, President Sullivan toured the Arboretum with Blandy Director Dave Carr and FOSA Director Martha Bjelland. President Sullivan then spent the night in the historic Quarters, marking another milestone for Blandy, as the first UVa President to do so. Blandy's REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) students were also in residence at the Quarters. This was not an unusual situation for the student-centered President, as she ran an REU program in Texas earlier in her career. We look forward to welcoming her back on her next Blandy visit!

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Celebrating Milestones and

Pausing to Reflect on the

Arboretum's Achievements

By Dave Carr

Director, Blandy Experimental Farm

Celebrating milestones comes naturally to people.  Birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations give us a chance to pause, reflect, and celebrate accomplishments.  It is much harder to make out progress when you're struggling to move forward in the face of daily trivialities and regular setbacks.  It is often difficult to understand the significance of decisions and events until sometime after the fact.  The long view offers perspective.  A lesson commonly drawn from these celebrations is that success is not an accident.  More often than not it comes from imagining what could be, staying dedicated to the goal, and making the right decisions along the way.

Orland E. White

The first entry of the first volume of the old accession books stored in a cabinet in Arborist Bob Arnold's office reads simply "1-38 Indigofera argentea Montevideo."  This marked the beginning of a formal plant collection that Dr. Orland E. White, botanist and Director of the Blandy Experimental Farm, wanted to develop as a resource at the fledgling University of Virginia field station.  In the years following 1938, new entries appeared in the books at a steady pace.  The number of trees and shrubs grew through exchanges with botanic gardens, acquisitions from nurseries, and collecting from places near and far.  Dozens of students and research fellows from around the world contributed to the collection and used it to advance the field of botany, researching questions in plant genetics, cytology, systematics, horticulture, and agriculture.

Upon his retirement in 1955, Dr. White had accessioned over 13,000 plants from all over the globe, and the University recognized his vision and dedication by naming the extraordinary collection in his honor.  His research collection had grown into an arboretum.  The day he planted that first indigo, Orland White set Blandy on an ambitious course, but he probably knew that those who came after him would have to be equally dedicated for its continued success.

Dedication to Blandy and the Arboretum has not been universal.  After the retirements of White's successors, Ralph Singleton and Curator Walter Flory, a new person with vision and dedication failed to step forward.  Academic programs stopped in 1965.  After an unsuccessful attempt by the Board of Visitors to sell the property, the University essentially put Blandy in mothballs.  A few like Thomas Ewert and the American Boxwood Society helped to further develop the Arboretum in the 1970s, but its value and potential seemed invisible to most in Charlottesville until 1982.

The revitalization of Orland White's vision began with the confluence of two important events.  Ed Connor, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, saw the value of Blandy and the Arboretum for ecological research and was appointed Director in 1982.  Soon after this rediscovery, the Friends of Blandy, led by Graham Blandy's nephew Orme Wilson, formed from the local community.  The Friends helped renew the grounds, started public events, and promoted the Arboretum to anyone who would listen, including Virginia law makers.  In 1986 the Virginia General Assembly voted to designate the Orland E. White Arboretum as the State Arboretum of Virginia.

In 1986 Blandy had a beautifully framed proclamation, but where to next?  After all, the designation of "State Arboretum" arrived with no funds.  The General Assembly didn't grant Blandy three wishes.  Why expect progress? In lesser hands, the proclamation could have been little more than a wall decoration, but Dr. Connor, FOSA, and a small group of resident Blandy faculty (Drs. Michael Bowers, Chris Sacchi, and Christine Flanagan) dedicated themselves to building on this foundation.  Blandy was once again a thriving research community, and the Arboretum, with a new focus on native plants, was reinvigorated as a resource for the University and the public.

Scores of people have contributed to the success of the State Arboretum since 1986 as the baton passed from hand to hand.  At a recent ceremony marking the 25^th anniversary, former FOSA Board member Bob Lee noted that he is the sole surviving member of the group that shepherded the proclamation through the General Assembly.  The FOSA presidency passed from Orme Wilson to Harry Symmes, to Charlie McCandlish, to Mary Pockman, to Louise Sinclaire, to Joslin Gallatin, to Charlotte Miller, to Jim Wyatt, to Greg Ellison, to Elaine Burden, to Tommy Dunning, and now to Bruce Downing.  FOSA eventually grew large enough to require its own full-time Director, and that has passed from Jen Schaefer to Louisa Frederiksen, to Vic Arthur, and to Martha Bjelland.  Over the years the Blandy Directorship passed to Michael Bowers, to Manuel Lerdau, and now to me.  Mary Olien, T'ai Roulston, Candace Lutzow-Felling, Steve Carroll, and Kyle Haynes stepped in as faculty departed for new challenges.

Each of us inherited a responsibility and vision that can be traced back to that first accession entry.  In looking at the list of people that preceded us, I am reminded that the list will continue to grow long after we're gone.  We all share the dedication to keep moving Blandy forward, to live up to the honor of the State Arboretum, and to give our successors a solid foundation on which to build.  To everyone who has volunteered, everyone who has joined FOSA, everyone who has been part of the Blandy staff, and everyone else who has helped us along the way, I want to say thanks for your dedication to making the State Arboretum blossom.  We're well on the way toward a proud 50^th anniversary.

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Photo Courtesy Marlon Malabanan

Fall Programs Explore Madison,

The Moon, Migration, and More

By Steve Carroll

Director of Public Programs

Fall public programs at Blandy will include a bit of everything - illustrated talks and hands-on workshops, a bus excursion and a moonlight hike, and even an art program.

September opens with two very different approaches to the plant world. We start with a program on botany geared toward gardeners and others interested in how plants work. We then see plants through the work of two artists who help cut down invasive oriental bittersweet vines and turn these into works of art!

In mid-September we co-host a day-long workshop aimed at small-property owners. This program is offered in conjunction with the Virginia Department of Forestry and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. For more information and to register, go to www.forestryforthebay.org. Space for this program is limited, so don't delay.

Next we board a bus and head to James and Dolly Madison's Montpelier, in Orange, VA. This day trip will include guided tours of the Madison home as well as its grounds, gardens, and historic landmark forest. In mid-October we will explore closer to home in a full-moon hike aimed at the whole family. Join us as we seek out and appreciate the evening sights, sounds, and smells of Blandy.

For the past three years we have joined with Shenandoah University's Department of Environmental Studies in co-hosting a fall program having broad interest. This October we will bring Neil Diboll, owner of highly regarded Prairie Nursery, to speak on the use of native plants as an alternative to turfgrasses.  This program is jointly sponsored by the Virginia Working Landscape Group, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Virginia Native Plant Society.

We end the fall series by looking skyward to consider the plight of our migratory songbird populations.  From botany to birds and from the moon to your own backyard, we hope you see something in our programs to bring you to Blandy.

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