Walter Hunnewell Arboretum
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The Walter Hunnewell Arboretum is a 9 hectare (22-acre) arboretum, containing over 500 species of woody plants in 53 families, as well as a 140-year-old topiary garden of native Eastern White Pine and Eastern Arborvitae. Specialty greenhouses including the grape house and peach house have been cared for by five generations of the Hunnewell family. The Arboretum is located at 845 Washington Street, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA, near Boston.
About 1843, H. H. Hunnewell (1810-1902) began the Arboretum at Wellesley. Hunnewell took great interest in planting species of evergreens that had not previously been available in the United States. Today's pinetum of rare, mature specimens includes Torreya nucifera, a massive weeping European Beech in front of the 19th century Italianate mansion, and one of the oldest Dawn Redwoods in the United States. The collection of specimen trees and shrubs include towering American White and English Oaks, lindens, tulip trees, bald cypress and Chinese Golden Larch, as well as different species and cultivars of azaleas, lilacs, viburnums, hollies, weeping cherries and rhododendrons.
The Hunnewell rhododendrons may be the oldest cultivated specimens in the United States, as H. H. Hunnewell started planting them in the 1850's and 1860's in his estate. Some of these original plants likely are still alive. He staged an exhibit of large rhododendrons on Boston Common in 1873, which helped to make them popular in U.S. cultivation.
The Hunnewell Pine Pinus x hunnewellii, a hybrid between Eastern White Pine and Japanese White Pine, was first raised at the Walter Hunnewell Arboretum in 1952.
The Walter Hunnewell Arboretum is not to be confused with the Hunnewell Arboretum at nearby Wellesley College, located across Lake Waban from the Hunnewell Estate (see illustration). The latter arboretum is the namesake of H. H. Hunnewell.
