Gardens and Tonic: Cemetery Arboreta and Pennsylvania Champion Trees

Many historic cemeteries were founded as green space and urban arboreta and are still great places to explore collections of large specimen trees. Join Aaron Greenberg, Arboretum Manager at Laurel Hill and West Laurel Hill Cemeteries, for a discussion of how trees and shrubs are managed in these historic Philadelphia cemeteries. We will discuss veteran tree management, cemetery horticulture, and planting for the future while honoring the past. Aaron also manages the Pennsylvania Champion Tree Program, and will discuss how the state’s largest trees get measured and documented on the PA Big Trees Register.

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Aaron Greenberg is an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist with a passion for interesting trees of all shapes and sizes. He is the Arboretum Manager for Laurel Hill Cemetery (thelaurelhillcemetery.org/visit/arboretum) and West Laurel Hill Cemetery (westlaurelhill.com/about/arboretum), which combined form a 265-acre Arboretum with over 4,000 specimen trees and shrubs representing over 550 species and cultivars. Aaron also volunteers as the State Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Champion Tree Program (pabigtrees.com), a register of nearly 2,000 of the largest trees of each species present in the state of Pennsylvania. In his free time, he enjoys hunting for and measuring big trees around the state.

Gardens and Tonic is a series of virtual webinars with horticulture professionals. Grab your favorite beverage and join Julie Jenney from the Scott Arboretum and a featured horticulture professional for plant-related topics, adventures, and stories – as well as design-focused talks on private and public gardens. Time will be set aside to answer your questions.

Registration is free but required. Participants must have Zoom downloaded on their computer and be comfortable using it. The webinar link will be included in the confirmation email received after registering online.