The Vassar Arboretum At Peace with Nature
Arboretum
As an intern in the College’s Office of Sustainability, Sandy might be more in touch with the natural beauty of the campus than most of her peers, but students have always drawn comfort and inspiration from the Vassar landscape–especially the trees that comprise the College’s Arboretum.
And just where on the Vassar campus does one find its arboretum? It consists of three zones: the carefully maintained central campus, natural areas within and around the campus, and the Vassar Preserve. Each is managed differently, providing different types of areas for research, recreation, and relaxation.
“The Arboretum is about learning and research,” says Kenneth Foster, Vassar’s Director of Sustainability and co-chair of the Arboretum Committee. “But it’s also about spaces where people can rejuvenate, and about taking care of this little piece of land that we have.”
Vassar has joined the Campus Nature Rx network, a coalition of colleges and universities that aims to nurture healthy, nature-connected campus communities. Vassar’s own chapter, Vassar Nature Rx, was created in 2024 to “familiarize the community with the many opportunities to engage with greenspace, and to promote awareness of nature’s healing powers.”
Dr. Foster points out that Vassar is not alone in encouraging its students to spend time outdoors among plant life. “At Cornell, their health service now gives out prescriptions for time in nature,” he says. “They’ll give out the prescription form that says, for example: Spend an hour sitting outdoors.”
The idea of the campus landscape as an educational space can be traced all the way back to Matthew Vassar. The 198 acres of campus were originally imagined by the founder to be an integral part of the education and enrichment of the College’s students, according to architect and academic Karen van Lengen ’73. “At this early date,” writes van Lengen, “[Matthew] Vassar foresaw the possibility of weaving together the pedagogical goals of the College with its emerging landscape plan—an opportunity that did not present itself in a like manner at other women’s colleges of the era.”
A pivotal moment in the evolution of the natural campus came in 1919 with the hiring of botany professor Edith Roberts, says Vassar Art History professor Yvonne Elet, Co-Chair of the Arboretum Committee. “She was a really prescient eco-botanist,” says Elet. “She’s the one who collected all the native plants in the county and established a garden called the Dutchess County Ecological Lab. Digging back through the records, it seems clear to me that she was instrumental in saying, ‘Let’s start an arboretum.’”
Six years later, the pioneering woman landscape architect Beatrix Farrand was hired as Consulting Landscape Gardener to the College, to actually start one.
At a recent conference held on the Vassar campus organized by the Olmsted Network, Vassar President Elizabeth H. Bradley moderated a panel called “Advancing Health, Inclusivity in Public Spaces,” featuring health professionals and scientists including physician and epidemiologist Dr. Howard Frumkin. “We know nature is good for your health,” remarked Dr. Frumkin. “Physical benefits are surprising: better birth outcomes, better bone density, lower obesity… if nature was a pill, we’d all be taking it.”
Dr. Foster, meanwhile, contends that there is another kind of benefit that nature bestows. “The thing with wellness is that the health of us human beings is directly connected to the health of the biosphere, the ecosystems, the other living beings on the planet. Having the arboretum helps to call us to take care of the other non-human creatures and the trees and plants on our campus because they’re valuable in their own right.”