Cornell Plantations - Academic Role

Academic Role

The Plantations' Director is funded as a professor of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, although 85 percent of the Plantations' budget comes from gifts. The Plantations continue to grow as it receives donations of environmentally-sensitive land throughout New York State. As of 2009, the Plantations had a $2.9 million annual operating budget.

In conjunction with the Department of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture, the Plantations sponsors a Graduate Fellowship in Public Garden Leadership, where students earn a Master of Professional Studies degree after a four-semester program. The program of study requires an internship, selection of a particular topic of interest, and completion of an action project. Numerous scientific papers have been published that relate to work done at the Plantations or written by academics affiliated with the Plantations. The Plantations offers three courses for academic credit and a number of informal lectures and tours. Lab work is done at the Plantations by students taking other courses in various subjects, including geology courses in the interdisciplinary Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Indeed the greater Plantations has a connection of some kind to over a hundred courses at Cornell. The Plantations' Director has also been responsible for summer session courses at the Plantations aimed towards alumni and horticultural enthusiasts.

The Plantations operate side-by-side with Cornell's other programs. Cornell's academic buildings, which are owned by either the university or New York State (for statutory college buildings), are on a landscaped campus with Plantations' gardens interspersed among them; the Plantations maintains four such gardens on Cornell's central campus. In addition, the College of Agriculture operates the Arnot Woods as a teaching forest, about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Ithaca; it was given to the university in 1927. The College operates the Dilmun Hill Student Farm, located near the Plantations, as a student-run farm that has been practicing sustainable agriculture on Cornell University's campus since 1996. Finally, the College also operates Campus Area Farms that comprise 11 different farms and 325 acres (132 ha) in and around the Cornell Campus. These farms provide research plots for faculty that are easily accessible. The difference between the Plantations and these other adjacent properties is that the Plantations are open to the public and are designed for both instruction as well as leisure, while the other properties are closed to the general public and focused upon teaching and research. Aside from physical proximity, the Plantations has affiliations with a number of Cornell academic departments. In fact, during the latter part of the 20th century, public gardens attached to colleges and universities such as the Plantations became a popular trend, due to the beneficial effects they had on campus unity and recruitment of students, creating bonds with and outreach to the local community, and providing a basis for ongoing research as well as establishing a living museum.

The Plantations earned a relatively brief mention as a campus diversion in the 112-page Cornell Desk Book publication of 1972 aimed at incoming students. The Cornell Daily Sun listed it in 2010 as one of the natural wonders of the Cornell and Ithaca areas that students frequently went past, or lived near to, without noticing.

A 1973 New York Times survey of public arboreta listed the Plantations as one of the 17 best in the Eastern U.S. for educational value. The same paper characterized the Robison Herb Garden as "a student's living reference library" when it opened in 1974.

The 200-page volume The Cornell Plantations, written by Ralph S. Hosmer, was published by the university in 1947, shortly after the gardens were so named. A film Cornell Plantations was made during 1974–1975 and shown on PBS in Connecticut and elsewhere. In 1987, the Plantations released a VHS video entitled A Year in the Garden, which showed seasonal changes in the F. R. Newman Arboretum and along the trails. The New York Times called the effort "thin" and best suited for Cornell alumni. The university published the volume Cornell Plantations Path Guide: The Gardens, Gorges, Landscapes, and Lore of Cornell in 1995, and a 172-page second edition was published with a slightly altered title in 2002.

Working with the Newman's Own Foundation and the Center for Plant Conservation, the Plantations are trying to restore the regional population of the American globeflower (Trollius laxus). The Plantations are trying to use predatory beetles (Laricobius nigrinus) to control the spread of the hemlock wooly adelgid (HWA).