The Purdue Arboretum's Native Nursery Supports and Extends Experiential Student Learning

In early 2014, the Purdue Arboretum began to expand its mission of collecting and displaying woody landscape plants to the Midwestern region of the United States by developing a native plant nursery.  By April 2014, ground was broken at Purdue’s Meig’s Research Farm, allowing the native nursery project to fully take shape. Today, the Purdue Arboretum is producing 35 different species of trees and shrubs native to Indiana and is one of the largest on-going projects for the young arboretum. The Arboretum aims to produce a variety of native plants that will eventually be introduced on Purdue’s campus, allowing students and faculty to observe, learn, and appreciate our Indiana natives in the landscape. Through research, teaching, and outreach, we can encourage people to appreciate and find beauty in more sustainable landscapes that express the particularities of a place, its ecosystems and climate. The Purdue Arboretum native nursery initiative also aims to support and extend experiential student learning through active student involvement in the selection, care, maintenance, and research of the trees and shrubs at the nursery.  This initiative encourages collaboration between faculty, students, and staff in the spirit of creating a living laboratory that will enable the campus community to explore the application of sustainability concepts in the campus environment. As example, in Fall of 2016, the arboretum nursery will be supplying plants for a campus re-development project. Todd’s Creek, currently channeled along State Street, the primary road leading to and through downtown West Lafayette and Purdue University, will be relocated to a more natural location within Purdue’s Horticulture Park. Over one hundred native plants, grown and cared for by Purdue students, will be harvested from the arboretum’s native nursery and planted by students along the re-located creek. This native nursery ini­tia­tive also seeks to establish part­n­er­ships between com­mer­cial grow­ers, hor­ti­cul­tu­ralists, land man­agers, land­s­cape archi­tects and res­to­ra­tion ecol­o­gists. By iden­ti­fy­ing exist­ing sources of locally-pro­p­a­gated native spe­cies and pro­vid­ing new research, this ini­tia­tive will cre­ate a roadmap link­ing grow­ers and con­sumers. This net­work will make native plants more diverse and read­ily avai­l­able in the trade. The pro­gram tar­gets both orna­men­tal native spe­cies to be used in land­s­cap­ing and native spe­cies needed for habi­tat res­to­ra­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­jects.