The black raspberries have ripened, the sunflowers are blooming, and the Arb Crew is busy with land restoration projects!  An easy way to spot land restoration work is to find the huge pile of buckthorn, an invasive shrub, growing higher and higher every week.  Eventually this pile will be used to generate heat and electricity at a cogeneration plant in the Twin Cities. It’s amazing how much the Arb Crew has accomplished in two months!

Arboretum Director Nancy Braker has a few other projects in the works in addition to massive buckthorn removal.  The Arboretum Office and the College Archives have just released a collection of historical documents about the Arb: https://contentdm.carleton.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2FArb

The collection currently has 43 documents including old maps, student projects, nature guides, and reports on land restoration projects.  The collection will continue to grow as more documents are digitized over the next several years.

This spring Xcel Energy (Carleton’s electricity provider) awarded Carleton a $10,000 grant for educational programming in the Arb!  Nancy is planning to use this grant money to hold workshops about invasive species and prairie burns for local landowners over the next few years.

The grant will also provide funding to improve the signage throughout the Arboretum.  Anyone who is afraid of ‘getting lost’ in the Arb will no longer have to worry about whether they will make it back to class on time!  The new signs will have maps to help people orient themselves, as well as clearly marked loops and arrows back to campus for the cartographically challenged.  Hopefully these signs will encourage the timid to get out there and explore the Arb!

If you’re lucky enough to be on campus this summer, get out there and explore the Arboretum this week.  Vegetatively and Professionally, the Arb is in bloom.