Events and Visiting
The Plantations are open daily without charge from dawn to dusk. From the campus, one walks out Forest Home Drive past the College of Agriculture quadrangle; the nearest highway is New York State Route 366. Walk-up tours are offered twice a week. Adult volunteers also serve as stewards, tour guides and special event staff. Such docents are challenged by the large variety of plants; one joked in 2010 that, "The ones I don’t know the name of, I call Species Nocluesem."
The New York Times has recommended Cornell Plantations as a place to visit several times, calling it "a satisfying experience" in 1965, one of the sights of Cornell in 1979, a destination along a bicycling tour in 1985, "another free diversion" in 1989, and "one last outing before leaving " in 2002. The Boston Globe recommended the Plantations in 2000 as a "free to the public museum of living plants". In 2007, The Ithaca Journal referred to it as "one of the area's gems" and three years later said it "combines the best of walking with the eye appeal of well tended gardens". The Buffalo News portrayed the Plantations in 2010 as one of the places that made Cornell worth a vacation for non-students.
National Geographic's 1998 guide to the 300 best public gardens in North America has an entry for the Plantations. The American Automobile Association's New York TourBook lists the Plantations as one of five arboreta and sixty gardens in the state; it does not get the "GEM" rating that one of the arboreta and ten of the gardens receive. Fodor's travel book for New York State lists the Plantations as an ordinary entry and says the gardens have "interesting cold-weather colors and textures". The Moon Handbooks volume for the state also lists it as a regular entry, without much commentary, as does the Great Destinations series The Finger Lakes Book. The Fun with the Family Upstate New York volume groups it with several other sights as "a real bargain" to explore for free. Most enthusiastic is the Frommer's travel guide for New York State, which rates the Plantations as a one-star ("highly recommended") sight, saying the Plantations is "a real find and well worth a visit for garden lovers or anyone seeking a bit of solace." The herb garden and knoll of rhododendrons come in for particular praise.
The Plantations provide a venue for a number of annual activities, including a "Fall In" festival, a celebration of Arbor Day and the Cornell Reunion 5 Mile Run. The Plantations is one of eight cultural and educational sites on the Ithaca Discovery Trail network. The Friends of the Gorges is a Cornell student organization, supported by Cornell Plantations, that performs trail repair and maintenance and clean-ups.
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