Arboretum

As of this fall, CESH is excited to announce that it will now be academically partnered with Bard’s Arboretum. Bard’s Arboretum’s mission is to preserve and enhance the natural and landscaped resources of the campus and to promote knowledge and appreciation of horticulture and conservation. CESH is dedicated to putting Bard’s commitment to the environment, science, and social change into practice to support the fair management of our shared natural resources.

Together, the Arboretum and CESH will look at regional, national and global environmental concerns with a focus on our land, trees, and plants and how they are an important factor in finding a solution to our climate and environmental crisis. Both programs already take advantage of Bard’s immediate surroundings, using the campus as a living laboratory for natural science research and interpretation through language and the arts. Bard’s sprawling park-like campus offers students an outdoor classroom that includes: an old growth forest, a Hudson River tributary, miles of hiking trails, acres of pollinator meadows, hundreds of historic tree specimens, formal cultivated gardens, New York State tree champions, and biodiverse horticultural palette of vegetation with an awe-inspiring backdrop of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains.

Both programs will work together to engage with the interdisciplinary nature of environmental questions with the goal of addressing environmental justice, cultivating community engagement, hands-on problem solving, and renewing awareness of Indigenous and other marginalized realities, for a new generation of environmental thinkers, policy-makers and activists. Both programs will work to protect Bard’s historical and ecologically-rich landscapes, promote ecological literacy through plant identification and interpretation, record Bard’s horticultural assets, offer diverse learning opportunities, publish articles, papers, and guides for professional and community outreach.