Arnold Arboretum, Boston, USA
The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is an arboretum located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale sections of Boston, Massachusetts. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest “link” in the Emerald Necklace. The Arboretum was founded in 1872 when the President and Fellows of Harvard College became trustees of a portion of the estate of James Arnold (1781–1868), a whaling merchant from New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1842, Benjamin Bussey (1757–1842), a prosperous Boston merchant and scientific farmer, donated his country estate Woodland Hill and a part of his fortune to Harvard University “for instruction in agriculture, horticulture, and related subjects”. Bussey had inherited land from fellow patriot Eleazer Weld in 1800 and further enlarged his large estate between 1806 and 1837 by acquiring and consolidating various farms that had been established as early as the seventeenth century. Harvard used this land for the creation of the Bussey Institute, which was dedicated to agricultural experimentation.
The first Bussey Institute building was completed in 1871 and served as headquarters for an undergraduate school of agriculture. Sixteen years after Bussey’s death, James Arnold specified that a portion of his estate was to be used for “…the promotion of Agricultural, or Horticultural improvements”. In 1872, when the trustees of the will of James Arnold transferred his estate to Harvard University, Arnold’s gift was combined with 120 acres (0.49 km2) of the former Bussey estate to create the Arnold Arboretum. In the deed of trust between the Arnold trustees and the College, income from Arnold’s legacy was to be used for establishing, developing and maintaining an arboretum to be known as the Arnold Arboretum, which “shall contain, as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs … either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air of West Roxbury”. The historical mission of the Arnold Arboretum is to increase knowledge of woody plants through research and to disseminate this knowledge through education.