Were you at the Arboretum this past Saturday April 28 for our Earth Day programs? Well, if you missed it, plan to join us next year. Two guest speakers educated people on our coastal habitats and native azaleas. We also had a children’s author who taught children’s nature crafts, a local beekeeper, a local flintknapper, Mississippi Master Naturalists and Mississippi Master Gardeners all on hand to take questions and talk to folks about their specialties.
In conjunction with our Earth Day programs, we were really lucky to have a great group of volunteers from an area business come out to plant trees in one of our new exhibits. Ms. Pat Drackett, the Arboretum Director, was on hand and had great things to say about their efforts:
4-28-12 2012 New South Mat Gum Pond. Image by Director, P Drackett
“Saturday, April 28 was Crosby Arboretum’s Earth Day event, and we couldn’t have come up with a better way to celebrate it! On that day, two dozen willing volunteers – employees of New South Access & Environmental Solutions and their family members – donated and planted 2,000 swamp gum (Nyssa sylvatica var. biflora) trees into the Arboretum’s new Gum Pond Educational Exhibit. The recent construction of this new wetlands exhibit was made possible by a grant through the Five Star Restoration program, administered by Southern Company in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The Crosby Arboretum was delighted to be chosen by New South as the site for their company’s annual conservation project. Thanks to the donated trees and the labor for their installation, the planting of the Gum Pond Educational Exhibit was accomplished much more the quickly than had been anticipated.
New South Access & Environmental Solutions is a Madison, Mississippi based company in operation since 2006, and has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. The company provides access matting that minimizes site disturbance by heavy equipment during construction projects, disasters, and events. As New South is an environmentally conscious company, it was a perfect fit with the Arboretum’s conservation mission.
Drew St. John, New South’s Chief Executive Officer, is a graduate of Mississippi State University’s landscape architecture department and was a student of former landscape architecture professor Ed Blake, Jr., who was the Crosby Arboretum’s first director and designer of the facility’s award-winning master plan.
Read the MSU Cares Community News article.
Students from the MSU department of landscape architecture designed the new exhibit’s site plan under the guidance of professor Bob Brzuszek, the Crosby Arboretum’s former senior curator. The new Gum Pond exhibit will teach visitors to the Arboretum about the value of gum pond habitats, a type of forested wetland.”
