After nearly 90 years of collaborative partnership, the Arboretum Foundation and the 91探花 Botanic Gardens announced Friday that they will combine operations under a single nonprofit organization: Seattle Botanic Gardens. An Operations and Management Agreement, approved by the Arboretum Foundation Board on Jan. 6, 2026, and by the 91探花 Board of Regents on Jan. 8, 2026, establishes a new relationship for these organizations, marking an important milestone in one of Seattle’s longest-running institutional partnerships.

鈥淪eattle is a place where nature and the urban environment intersect in an exceptional way,鈥� said Maribeth O鈥機onnor, board president of the Arboretum Foundation. 鈥淲hether you’re a visitor seeking quiet refuge or a scientist studying the vital connections between people and plants, the Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture are a natural treasure.鈥�

The Washington Park Arboretum is jointly managed by the Arboretum Foundation, the 91探花Botanic Gardens and the City of Seattle. Under this new agreement, Seattle Botanic Gardens will continue to work in close partnership with the 91探花and Seattle Parks and Recreation on the stewardship of the Arboretum and its collection. This agreement strengthens the organization’s ability to serve as an effective partner to the City of Seattle, stewarding urban green spaces and contributing research-backed solutions to environmental challenges facing the region.

“The 91探花 has been a steward of botanical science and education in the Pacific Northwest for generations,” said Maggie Walker, a member of the 91探花Board of Regents. “This partnership ensures that this important work continues and grows, while allowing the University to maintain its deep connection to research, teaching and community engagement through these extraordinary living collections.”

For Seattle’s broader community, this means expanded access to nature, science and cultural experiences. As a unified organization, Seattle Botanic Gardens will have greater capacity to offer diverse programming 鈥� from youth education and summer camps to volunteer opportunities and cultural celebrations 鈥� while maintaining free public access to the Arboretum and gardens. It will be better positioned to invest in facilities, amenities and transportation options that make these spaces more welcoming and accessible.

The 91探花Botanic Gardens currently owns and maintains the plant collections of the Washington Park Arboretum, conducts plant conservation research, and provides educational programming in the Washington Park Arboretum and at the Center for Urban Horticulture. The Arboretum Foundation provides funding for the horticultural and education programs of the 91探花Botanic Gardens and supports visitor engagement at the Arboretum and Japanese Garden. Together, the two organizations have shared volunteer resources, outdoor and indoor spaces, and collaborated on initiatives ranging from the Fiddleheads outdoor preschool to public art installations like the John Grade Union sculpture.

The new organization will manage and operate three locations: the 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum, the Seattle Japanese Garden and the Center for Urban Horticulture, which includes the 74-acre Union Bay Natural Area. Together, these sites attract hundreds of thousands of visitors annually and serve as vital resources for recreation, education, conservation and scientific research.

“This change unites the robust fundraising, advocacy, and volunteer network of the Arboretum Foundation with the horticultural expertise, strong public programming, and impactful conservation research of the 91探花Botanic Gardens,” said Christina Owen, director of the 91探花Botanic Gardens. “The result will be something extraordinary 鈥� a destination botanic garden for Seattle that provides an exemplary visitor experience, meaningful research and inclusive access to some of our city鈥檚 most treasured green spaces.”

The organization is currently conducting a national search for its first CEO/president, who will lead Seattle Botanic Gardens into this new chapter. All current permanent UWBG employees will be offered employment by the new organization.

For more information, contact Maribeth O鈥機onnor, board president, Arboretum Foundation at BoardPresident@arboretumfoundation.org, or Dan Brown, director, 91探花School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at danbro@uw.edu.

Botanical gardens historically are exclusive spaces, but the 91探花 is working to change that.

Many gardens originated as private spaces for predominantly white and wealthy individuals, said 91探花Botanic Gardens director . The collections were often curated through a process of stealing and renaming before the gardens were gifted as land to cities and universities.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a history of colonialism in many botanic gardens,鈥� said Owen. 鈥淭hat is the bedrock on which we鈥檙e standing. Plants and collections that exist throughout the world were collected in ways that did not honor the people and did not honor the plants themselves. They鈥檙e driven by the colonial age. That鈥檚 a history that all gardens must grapple with.鈥�

That鈥檚 the challenge for the , which includes both the Washington Park Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture. When Owen was hired in July 2021, UWBG already had an Equity and Justice Committee and was organizing an ongoing speaker series, , which explores how public gardens can evolve to meet the needs of local communities.

Owen is shifting the focus from bottom-up initiatives to work that is supported with and through leadership.

鈥淧art of what we鈥檙e looking at is having regular updates with our leadership team,鈥� Owen said, 鈥渁nd having the leadership team get more engaged in equity and social justice work and developing better onboarding. One of my big long-term goals is to see an increase in the diversity of staff. I think that starts with us and making sure that our culture is supportive for candidates of color and for employees of color.鈥�

That is a major barrier for public gardens, according to a recently published by the , an initiative housed at Denver Botanic Gardens that helps public gardens become more accessible spaces. The upcoming report found that lack of institutional diversification could be addressed through adjustments to hiring processes and procedures.

鈥淭he other piece is the need for training and professional development,鈥� said , director of the IDEA Center and a speaker in UWBG鈥檚 New Directions series. 鈥淭he way to support intuitional diversification is through training. The other part is organizational culture and leadership 鈥� the awareness that there needs to be an internal culture shift as a key step.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of fear, a lack of buy-in or resistance to change. You can do all the training and all the changes you want, but it鈥檚 basically superficial unless there鈥檚 a culture change.鈥�

A new direction

The New Directions speaker series started in May, with past guests addressing topics like engaging with local Indigenous populations, youth leadership development, job training programs and opportunities for public land to support urban food systems and engage with BIPOC communities.

Sean M. Watts, principal of SM Watts Consulting and co-founder of , will give the final talk on Sept. 20. Watts鈥� lecture will explore how public gardens can support the work to drive environmental and land use policy and help white-led organizations act on diversity, equity and inclusion.

鈥淚 think we’re learning a lot about the priorities of the communities that we want to connect with,鈥� said adult education supervisor for UWBG. 鈥淚鈥檓 realizing that if we鈥檙e going to build relationships, we need to be addressing the priorities of those communities.鈥�

Plummer suggested ending the speaker series with a town hall, which is now scheduled for Sept. 21. The half-day, co-creative workshop will help create an action plan to address community challenges.

鈥淲e invite people from within the region,鈥� said Plummer, who plans to use the town hall as a prototype, 鈥渁nd we start by saying, 鈥榃hat were some of the big things that really resonated from the lecture series? What do we want to change? Can we set some actions?鈥欌��

UWBG鈥檚 outreach will continue on October with the . This year鈥檚 event will focus on bridging the gap between tribal practices and local government. The Coast Salish people have been included in the planning.

鈥淲e’re going to be looking at Indigenous people’s access to and role in the management of the local urban forests,鈥� Farmer said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e looking at an identity shift for our organization, but we need to hear from others in the community and not have it be an insular conversation.鈥�

Growing gardens

UWBG has collections from around the world. In the alone, visitors can view plants from Cascadia, Australia, China, Chile and New Zealand.

鈥淚t’s important to be intentional and thoughtful about these plants and places, how they鈥檙e collected and grown and the meaning to the people that are from there,鈥� Owen said.

The history of how corrected were curated has factored into the explicit and implicit exclusion from botanical gardens, said Farmer. UWBG is working to undo a perception of exclusivity by hosting programs like the speaker series and holding a summer camp that offers scholarships and is otherwise filled through a lottery system.

UWBG also launched . Each meeting is centered around a single topic 鈥� examples include the colonial past of botanical gardens, segregation in Seattle and problematic plant names 鈥� and Equity and Justice Committee members distribute resources and materials for staff to view before attending the discussion.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really helped establish some common goals and common identity around this work,鈥� Farmer said. 鈥淧reviously, some on our staff felt like diversity, equity and inclusion work was the role of our education and outreach team but didn鈥檛 see how it fit into their work with facilities or horticulture. It鈥檚 really helped the gardeners see how much of an ambassador they are to the public when they鈥檙e out on the grounds.鈥�

For more information, contact Owen at crowen@uw.edu or Farmer at jsfarmer@uw.edu.

Construction started this month on the ‘s new Arboretum Loop Trail, one of the largest improvement projects to date in the Seattle public garden.

The paved path will create more opportunities for pedestrians, wheelchair users, slow-moving bicycle riders and families with strollers to exercise and explore the arboretum, which features one of the nation’s most diverse plant collections west of the Mississippi River.

“The loop trail is an important part of our master plan and will provide entry into part of the gardens and collections of the arboretum that are rarely visited today,” said , director of , which cares for the arboretum’s gardens, trees and plant collections.

“The trail will allow the citizens of our growing city a stroll through one of the most beautiful places in North America.”

As part of mitigation for the current phase of the SR 520 bridge project, the Washington State Department of Transportation is providing $7.8 million to help complete portions of the arboretum’s 20-year master plan, which was adopted in 2001 after years of public input. This paved path is a central element of that plan.

Once finished, the new 1.2-mile trail will connect to Arboretum Drive, creating a 2.5-mile loop through the public garden, from East Foster Island Road south to East Madison Street. Using footbridges, visitors will have year-round access to parts of the 230-acre arboretum that currently are hard to reach, including wetlands and Arboretum Creek.

Staff and volunteers assessed nearly 2,400 plants along the proposed trail and chose a route to minimize impacts and avoid the largest and most unique trees as much as possible.

As part of the project, persistent invasive species will be removed along the entire trail route and thousands of native and noninvasive plants will be added in ways that support the master plan.

“The trail project will improve ecological function along much of Arboretum Creek by widening the channel, adding pools and woody debris to slow water and improve habitat, removing invasive plants and planting a diverse range of natives 鈥� far greater than what existed before,” said Ray Larson, curator of living collections with 91探花Botanic Gardens. “These changes will create a more natural stream channel and enhance ecological benefits to insects, birds and animals.”

The arboretum is owned and managed cooperatively between the 91探花 and the City of Seattle, with support from the .

Construction is scheduled to continue until December 2017. Ohno Construction is completing the project.

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For more information, contact Reichard at reichard@uw.edu or 206-616-5020 and Larson at halcyon@uw.edu or 206-616-1118.

A new for smartphones and tablets shows every plant and tree that’s part of the arboretum’s collection, now numbering more than 15,000. Visitors can pull up the map on their phones, locate themselves, then zoom in to see which plants are nearby.

Each colored dot displays details about the plant, including its scientific and common name, where it came from, images on Google and last-reported condition. The map also gives “accession” information, which means the year it was planted in the arboretum and, more specifically, the order in which it was planted in relation to other plants of the same year.

The online map first debuted two years ago but wasn’t optimized for mobile devices, said Tracy Mehlin, information technology librarian at who managed the project. Now, with a gift from the Northwest Horticultural Society, the map responds much more quickly in the field, she said.

The best part about having a digital, mapped library at your fingertips?

“I like the ability for people to save favorite plants,” Mehlin said. “They can do a search for certain plants and get a results list, or walk around and say, ‘that’s a fantastic tree’ and favorite it. Then they can come back a year later and find that same tree.”

The favorites lists are saved on the device and don’t require a login or registration to use the feature.

91探花Botanic Gardens plans to create a similar interactive map for the plants at the , north of the arboretum along Lake Washington. Staff members welcome talented students with an interest in GIS and plants to suggest improvements as the map gains more users.

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For more information, contact Mehlin at tmehlin@uw.edu or 206-616-9481.

The started work last August on a two-year project to 聽digitize those records and create an interactive geographic information systems map for the entire park. Eventually planners and visitors will be able to go online and pinpoint specific plants and collections within the arboretum, and access all sorts of historical details.

“People will be able to find an area in the arboretum, then zoom down and see which plants are there,” says , project manager and information technology librarian at the UW’s . “It will be really fascinating and educational to have all of that history linked to the plant records, and accessible online to everyone.”

One of the first tasks of the project was to begin surveying and verifying the geospatial coordinates of the 230-acre park, which decades ago was divided into 595 grid squares, each 100 feet by 100 feet. When those grid markers and coordinates are confirmed, they will be used to create a map that supports the geo-referenced database. Two- and three-person teams of students and staff have already been out surveying for the past couple months.

It’s a multitiered project, and Mehlin has been working closely with other partners at the 91探花.

, director of 91探花Botanic Gardens, is the principal investigator on the grant along with , a 91探花professor of environmental and forest sciences. , a research scientist and engineer with the College of the Environment, has been helping coordinate the student survey crews and GIS mapping. 91探花information systems engineer David Campbell is working on the searchable database and Web interface.

Others involved are helping with various projects, including digitizing the existing maps, as well as handwritten notes and histories attached to each of the park’s 10,000 “accessions,” plants that are part of the formal collection. 聽The 91探花Botanic Gardens owns and manages the collection in the arboretum which is a City of Seattle park.

When completed, the searchable database will be a boon for environmental research, park management and visitors, Reichard said.

“The idea is that eventually you’d be able to get the coordinates of a particular collection, like our magnolias, and locate them on your cell phone or GPS unit,” she said. “We can start putting together virtual tours, and visitors can go from plant to plant.”

Awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the grant is expected to run through August 2014.

Using a computer to alter pitch, add reverb and rhythmic layers and manipulate other variables, 91探花 composer created music that’s part natural, part imagined.

Rain becomes a chiming melody. A lawnmower turns discordant, followed by a horn-like herald. The tempo of falling leaves is intensified.

To complete the cycle, seven of Aresty’s compositions are now being broadcast from speakers hung in the arboretum where she originally recorded sounds. From now until the end of October, they’ll play continuously each Wednesday from 3-6 p.m., and Saturday and Sundays from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. She’ll give four guided tours, at 10:30 and noon, Oct. 13 and 14, starting from the arboretum’s Graham Visitor center.

One way to listen is simply to wander the trails above Azalea Way. Or there’s a , with paper copies available at the visitor center.

One of the most satisfying things, as the installations began playing one by one during the last couple weeks, was “observing people who’ve found it by themselves, who stop and explore the space, listening to the music,” said Aresty, who is earning a doctorate in music composition.

At one site, the music plays softly enough that people crunching by on the gravel path miss it.

“I watched a woman stop while walking her dog, still, she didn’t seem to hear anything. But the dog’s ears perked up and it started looking all around,” Aresty said.

Aresty’s for “Paths II: The Music of Trees” includes a where you can read about each site, play audio clips of the original sound recordings and excerpts of the music she created.

For example, listen to the original recording of and the that was created by clicking on the “Rhododendron thomsonii” site.

“Initially I planned to make the wind the focus of the piece,” Aresty writes. “But one day when I came to record I was treated to a fascinating, isolated sound: in a far corner I heard what I suspected (but never actually saw) was a bunch of leaves or dried flowers falling to the ground.聽 This piece explores the rhythmic possibilities of this mysterious sound.”

The arboretum venue where this piece plays also has art by 91探花alumna Kate Clark, who created sculptures to accompany some of the sound installations. This particular sculpture is woven into the branches and includes finger cymbals that are like coins one tosses into wishing wells. That’s because the music for that site made Clark think of wishing wells.

On the website, you also can listen to that was then transformed into the playing at the site “Maple with fallen tree limb.”

Aresty writes, “When I began working on this site I was excited to explore sounds of new life around this gigantic fallen limb .聽. . On a few occasions I brought a homemade contact microphone to this site.聽(Like its name suggests, it picks up sounds by touch rather than through the air.)聽Though I was outwitted by many an ant 鈥� they refused to climb over it 鈥� the flies loved it.聽When they landed on the small disk I was able to capture the normally inaudible rhythmic patterns the flies create as they dance about.”

If you visit that site, walk to the far side of the maple tree to see the solar panel that powers the setup. Much of the hardware for the installations 鈥� speakers, wiring and such鈥� are out of sight. They were installed by 91探花Botanic Gardens arborist Chris Watson, who as part of his work climbs trees in the arboretum from time to time. The most complicated installation involved scaling both an 80-foot Douglas fir and a towering cedar to install solar panels, battery boxes with electronics yards of wires and six speakers, all with Aresty’s help on the ground.

Funding for the project came from the , headquartered in New Jersey, 91探花 and Kickstarter, which connects artists needing funds with potential donors, where she raised $8,000.

The arboretum is a city park, with the plant collections owned and managed by the . In 2011 the director of the botanic gardens, , alerted the chairs of 91探花departments of visual and performing arts that ideas for collaborative projects were welcome. Aresty was already considering composing a piece to be installed in a tree and her advisor , director of the 91探花School of Music, suggested she consider a project in the arboretum.

“After meeting with Abby the first time I knew that her project was something we wanted to facilitate,” Reichard said. “Abby is incredibly creative and also technologically curious – as her ideas evolved they just got better. This is exactly the sort of project I wanted to encourage.”

Reichard and Aresty conferred with experts and got a wildlife permit to ensure animals in the arboretum wouldn’t be hurt by the project.

“I keep telling Abby she is the only music composition student in history whose work required a wildlife handling permit,” Reichard said.