Trip Plan B and a Garden I’d Never Seen

October 7th, 2014

Well, we were going to take a busload of folks to see Manhattan’s High Line park and then to the New Jersey Grounds for Sculpture on Oct. 17, but now we’re switching to Plan B.

Morris Arboretum’s swan pond.

The Grounds for Sculpture is closing all day Oct. 17 to get ready for a new exhibition, and so we’re heading to Philadelphia’s superb Morris Arboretum instead. The trip still features the High Line.

Since Morris closes at 4 p.m., Chrissie Kelly at Lowee’s Group Tours and I flipped the itinerary so that we’ll spend a couple of hours in the morning touring Morris, then have a box lunch (included) on the arboretum grounds, then head over to the High Line for the rest of the afternoon.

We’ll do a guided tour of the High Line first thing, then folks will have time to enjoy this park built on an abandoned, elevated rail line on their own. The trip includes time to grab dinner at the nearby Chelsea Market – or any other nearby Manhattan restaurant that grabs your eye. We’ll head back to Harrisburg at 6 p.m.

We haven’t run a tour to Morris in years, so it’s about time to go back anyway. It’s one of my top five Pennsylvania public gardens.

Morris is a 175-acre one-time estate garden on the outskirts of Philly that’s part of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s also Pennsylvania’s official state arboretum.

As you’d expect, it’s got a lot of great, old trees – some of which should be turning into their fall color by the 17^th. But Morris is more than a tree collection.

Morris Arboretum’s outdoor garden railway is its signature attraction.

I especially like the rose garden and the more formal plantings in the Pennock Garden, but Morris’s signature garden is a 1-acre outdoor railway that’s impressive to kids and grownups alike.

A few seats are still open if you’d like to come along. The cost is $127, and Lowee’s is handling the registrations by calling 717-657-9658.

In other garden-visiting news, I recently saw one of the few Pennsylvania public gardens I’d never seen before.

The venue was the Barnes Arboretum in Merion Station, just outside of Philadelphia. I’m a member of the Garden Writers Association, and we had a regional meeting there.

The 12-acre grounds once was the home and landscape of Dr. Albert Barnes, an inventor, chemist, author and businessman who made his fortune by discovering Argyrol, an antiseptic compound that prevented infant blindness.

Barnes amassed an incredible art collection that used to be housed in this same place but recently moved to a new venue in the city near the Philadelphia Art Museum.

His wife, Laura, developed the grounds and also founded the Barnes Foundation Arboretum School, which uses the 12 acres of plantings as a learning laboratory.

The perennial garden at Barnes Arboretum.

The Barnes Arboretum only recently opened for regular public tours. Visitors can see the grounds on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the growing season. It closes for the season this year on Nov. 2.

As a teaching institution, it specializes in collections so students can compare differences and similarities in a single view. The place has 200 species of ferns, for example, plus 100 different hostas, all but two stewartia species, and more than two dozen state champion trees – mostly unusual varieties.

The Barnes Arboretum also has a more formally planted rose and perennial garden, and its newest addition is a medical plant garden with some 200 species ranging from hardy natives to seasonal tropicals.

The best part, though, is the diversity of trees. You’ll be able to see one of just about anything there. And the two best times are spring, when many species are in bloom, and fall, when everything finishes the season in a blend of red, orange, gold and russet.

I’ll have to plan a trip there. Let’s just hope it’s not on a day before they decide to open a new exhibition.