Adkins Arboretum

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Adkins Arboretum (400 acres) is a native garden and arboretum located within Tuckahoe State Park at 12610 Eveland Road, Ridgely, Maryland. It is open daily except major holidays; an admission fee is charged.

1 Mission
2 History
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Mission

The mission of Adkins Arboretum is to promote the appreciation and conservation of the native plants of the Delmarva Peninsula. The arboretum’s diverse setting of woodlands, meadows, wetlands, streams, and gardens serves as a model for land management and ecological restoration. Through its educational, research, cultural, and recreational programs, the arboretum strives to inspire its community to adopt land stewardship practices for a healthier and more beautiful world.

[edit] History

The arboretum was originally established in 1972 to be the Maryland state arboretum on the grounds of Tuckahoe State Park. It first opened in the 1980s as a result of a major donation from Leon Andrus, a native of Queen Anne's County. The arboretum derives its name from the Adkins family, an Eastern Shore family of conservationists that was friends with Andrus. When Andrus died in 1989, he left a bequest to the arboretum's endowment.

Its original mission was to display all of Maryland's forest types; however in the 1990s, its mission was revised to emphasize the display and study of the Delmarva Peninsula's indigenous plant communities. In 1998, its operations were converted to a public/private partnership, with Maryland granting a 50-year lease to the Friends of Adkins Arboretum. Today, the arboretum is self-supporting with grants and donations.

Adkins Arboretum features over 600 species of native shrubs, trees, wildflowers and grasses, and contains more than four miles of paths through meadows and native plant gardens on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.