We had a brilliant day at the Morris Arboretum today!
One hours drive from our hotel brought us to the Morris Arboretum http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/index.shtml which is connected to the University of Pennsylvania.
At 10:00 am we met our guide Barry Jeffries at the entrance. It was a perfect sunny and warm day at 25°C. He gave us an amazing 3 hour tour around the central walks of the garden and very important a 'Treetop walk'
Even if this garden has a very big collection of trees, it also has wide open spaces, a small number of lovely buildings from times when this garden was privately owned and created. It is hugely inspired by travels to Europe and especially Japan. In the 1950's they employed a Headgardener from asia and you can see his influence in the garden. Is has a huge collection of asian trees and shrubs. Our highlight today was this specimen of Cercidiphyllum japonicum! I quote one of my fellow trainees 'F+++ing hell, that tree makes our champion tree in wisley look like a sapling!'
According to our guide, many of these huge multi stemmed trees were trained to look like this when they were younger. My personal highlight was this big specimen of Pinus bungeana (Tree of Enlightenment). Its bark starts of in a colorful camouflage pattern and then changes into white when it gets older :)
After our tour we split up to explore the garden further. John and I went to the wetland, which is a natural area close to the river with a lake. We found many different animals, great!
Worth mentioning are also some special features of the garden like the Fernery, and a woven skulpture by the artist Patrick Dougherty.
What a brilliant day :). Tomorrow we have our first day in Longwood.
Janina Timter, Morris Arboretum, Philadelphia, 03/05/2015