Page 21

A Perspective 
The Arboretum at 50 
 of its seed origin. More recently    by William R. Jordan III Arboretum's
early course are 
 the Longenecker Gardens has been  I first read Professor Leopold's obvious.
The first was the great 
 the beneficiary of plant dedication address in 1977, shortly local interest
early in this century 
 explorations, both domestic and after beginning work here at the in creating
parks for the rapidly 
 foreign, sponsored by the USDA Arboretum, when I came across a growing City
of Madison. The 
 and other arboreta and botanical copy in the UW Archives, and I first efforts
to set the Arboretum 
 gardens. The high priority placed have been thinking about it ever land
aside as open space were in 
 on the accession of plants of since. It seems to me that it is fact aimed
at creation of a park. 
 documented origin will ensure that much more than a historic While that
effort failed, and the 
          the collections of the Longenecker curiosity. It is a prophetic
       Arboretum is explicitly not a park 
          Horticultural Gardens are of statement and a charter for the  
 today, this influence lives on in 
          scientific value to researchers both development of a new kind
of    public use and appreciation of the 
          now and for the next fifty years. U enterprise — not just
a new kind  Arboretum — and even more 
 of arboretum, but a new way of   significantly in the powerful 
 thinking about and dealing with   esthetic and historical motives that 
 nature. I think it has major       underlay the novel development 
 implications, not only for the     plan for the Arboretum, so clearly 
 Arboretum itself or the University evident in Professor Leopold's 
 of Wisconsin, but for            dedication address. 
 technological societies everywhere.   Nevertheless, the park 
 Yet recognition of this has been   movement is part of the prehistory 
 surprisingly slow in coming. Even of the Arboretum, not its history. 
 today, it seems to me, its full     The history began with the 
 import has not been fully grasped successful drive for the first 
 by scientists generally, by many   acquisition of land in the early 
 environmentalists, or by the      1930s, the decade of dust and 
 general public. For evidence of    depression, and it seems clear in 
 this you have only to consider that retrospect, if it was not clear then,
 in all that has been written about  that the Arboretum is a product 
 Leopold during the last thirty-five of that time in several specific 
          McKay Center years, no one has identified his    ways. 
participation in the development   First, it was the low prices of 
of the UW Arboretum and the  the Depression era that made it 
ideas behind it as one of his most  possible to acquire land on the 
novel and far-reaching  scale conceived by Michael Olbrich 
contributions to the modern  and Joseph Jackson, the early 
conservation movement of which  leaders of the project — largely 
he was both prophet and pioneer.  with money provided by a few 
 The Arboretum, it seems,  public-spirited benefactors such as 
represented an idea that was far  Louis Gardner. Indeed, the 
— perhaps too far — ahead of its  acquisition of land for the
time in 1934. Where did this idea  Arboretum coincided almost 
come from? What did it mean to  exactly with the period of 
Leopold and his audience? And  economic depression. It began in 
what does it mean to us as we  the very depths of the Depression 
look back over our first half  in 1932, and was 95 percent 
century and look forward to our  complete by 1941. Far from being 
second?  paradoxical, this reflected a 
 It seems to me that some of the  national pattern, as farms failed 
major influences that shaped the  due to economic hard times and 
 21