The Morton Arboretum, in

Lisle, Illinois Lisle ( ) is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,390 at the 2010 census, and in 2019 the population was recorded to be 23,270. It is a south-western suburb of Chicago in the Illinois ...

, United States, is a public garden and outdoor museum with a library, herbarium, and program in tree research including the Center for Tree Science. Its grounds, covering 1,700

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (6.9 square kilometres), include cataloged collections of trees and other living plants, gardens, and restored areas, among which is a restored

tallgrass prairie The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and Historical ecology#Anthropogenic fire, anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals (primarily bison) provided periodic disturbances to th ...

. The living collections include more than 4,100 different plant species. There are more than 200,000 cataloged plants. As a place of recreation, the Arboretum has hiking trails, roadways for driving and bicycling, a interactive children's garden and a maze. The Schulenberg Prairie at the Arboretum was one of the earliest prairie restoration projects in the Midwest, begun in 1962. It is one of the largest restored prairies in the Chicago suburban area. Three dozen cuttings from the old burr oak that had been in

Lincoln Park Zoo Lincoln Park Zoo, also known as Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens, is a zoo in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois. The zoo was founded in 1868 and is the second oldest zoo in the United States. It is also one of a small number of zoos to offer fr ...

will be grafted onto rootstocks at the Arboretum. The Arboretum offers a nature-centered education program for children, families, school groups, scouts, and adults, including tree and restoration professionals. The Natural Areas Conservation Training (N-ACT) Program offers classroom and online courses in

ecological restoration Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, destroyed or transformed. It is distinct from conservation in that it attempts to retroactively repair ...

techniques. The Arboretum also offers credit courses through the Associated Colleges of the Chicago Area, a regional consortium. The

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

(IUCN) designated the Morton Arboretum as its Center for Species Survival: Trees, to study and promote the conservation and restoration of global tree ecosystems and strategies for species survival.

History

The arboretum was established on December 14, 1922, by Joy Morton, founder of the

Morton Salt Morton Salt is an American food company producing salt for food, Water purification, water conditioning, industrial, agricultural, and road/highway use. Based in Chicago, the business is North America's leading producer and marketer of salt. It i ...

Company. Morton's father,

Julius Sterling Morton Julius Sterling Morton (April 22, 1832 – April 27, 1902) was a Nebraska newspaper editor and politician who served as President Grover Cleveland's United States Secretary of Agriculture, secretary of agriculture. He was a prominent Bourbon Dem ...

, had founded

Arbor Day Arbor Day (or Arbour Day in some countries) is a Secularity, secular day of observance in which individuals and groups are encouraged to plant trees. Today, many countries observe such a holiday. Though usually observed in the spring, the date v ...

. Morton's daughter, Jean Cudahy (Morton) took her father's seat on the board of trustees after he died in 1934. The arboretum's first superintendent was Clarence E. Godshalk, who had received a master's degree in landscape design from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1921. Joy Morton's Thornhill Estate, established in 1910, formed the core of the Arboretum's original area. In 1940, Mrs. Cudahy hired May Theilgaard Watts as a teacher in the new educational program. The Morton family requested an educational center be constructed on the site of their home. The estate was razed in the early 1940s following the death of Joy's wife Margaret. 1962 marked the beginning of the Schulenberg Prairie Restoration Project. Clarence Godshalk developed plans to create a buffer on the western border of the Arboretum. He called it "a native planting" and planned for it to be on farmland acquired by the Arboretum in the late 1950s. He wanted to turn old farmland back into a prairie with seeds collected from prairies nearby. He asked Ray Schulenberg to take this on. Schulenberg developed restoration goals and began replicating composition, structure, and local gene pools of plants in local prairies. He studied all of this with Floyd Swink, the Arboretum's taxonomist at the time, Robert Betz, a biologist, and David Kropp, a landscape architect.

Board of trustees

The first chairman of the board of trustees for the Morton Arboretum was Joy Morton. Following his death in 1934, his daughter, Jean M. Cudahy (Morton), became chairman of the board. Jean died in 1953 and her brother, Sterling, became chairman of the board. When Sterling died in 1961, his daughter Suzette Morton Davidson became chairman of the board. in 1977, Suzette Morton retired and was replaced by the first person outside of the Morton family to be chairman of the board, Charles C. Hafner III. In 2000, W. Robert Reum became chairman of the board. As of 2014, Darrell B. Jackson has been chairman of the board of trustees.

Directors

In 1938, Clarence Godshalk was named director of the Morton Arboretum. He served for 28 years, before he retired in 1966. He was replaced by Dr. Marion Trufant Hall, who served as director until 1990, when Gerard T. Donnelly was named executive director and CEO.

Sterling Morton Library

Harry Weese Harry Mohr Weese (June 30, 1915 – October 29, 1998) was an Americans, American architect who had an important role in 20th-century modernism and historic preservation. His brother, Ben Weese, was also a renowned architect. Early life and educat ...

, the Sterling Morton Library was constructed in 1963 and named after Sterling Morton, son of founder Joy Morton. It holds more than 30,000

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

s and

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

s, as well as tens of thousands of non-book items including prints, original art, letters, photographs,

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

plans and drawings. The collections focus on plant sciences, especially on trees and shrubs; gardening and landscape design; ecology, with a special interest in Midwestern prairie,

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with woody plants (trees and shrubs), or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunli ...

, and

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and en ...

s; natural history; and botanical art. Its catalog is online. The Library's Suzette Morton Davidson Special Collections includes books, artwork, historic nursery catalogs, landscape drawings, photographs, letters, maps and institutional documents. It also includes documents of May Theilgaard Watts, Jens Jensen, Marshall Johnson, O.C. Simonds and Donald Culross Peattie. The Sterling Morton Library is a member of the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

Visitor Center

The Visitor Center was built in 2004 and designed by David Woodhouse Architects. The building includes wood representing the Arboretum's collections and incorporates sustainable features such as permeable pavers in the parking lots and local fieldstone salvaged from a predecessor building.

Illumination

Since 2013, an annual Illumination of tree lights has been conducted at the Arboretum from the end of November until early January."Illumination: Tree Lights at The Morton Arboretum , The Morton Arboretum". ''www.mortonarb.org''. Retrieved 2020-04-23."About Illumination Designer John Featherstone , The Morton Arboretum". ''www.mortonarb.org''. Retrieved 2020-04-27. The illumination section is along a mile-stretch of curved, paved pathway.IL 60532, 4100 Illinois Route 53 Lisle. "Illumination at the Morton Arboretum". ''Enjoy Illinois''. Retrieved 2020-04-26.

References

External links

Morton Arboretum website

The Morton Arboretum at Google Cultural InstituteDavid Woodhouse Architects Images of Visitor CenterIllinois Great Places
{{Authority control Arboreta in Illinois Botanical gardens in Illinois Lisle, Illinois Protected areas of DuPage County, Illinois 1922 establishments in Illinois Nature centers in Illinois Protected areas established in 1922