The University has been recognized by the Arbor Day Foundation as a Tree Campus USA Institution for the 10th straight year. Tree Campus USA is a national program that honors colleges and universities that have a commitment to promoting healthy trees and engaging staff and students in conservation goals.
The University’s arboretum and grounds include more than 1,400 trees of 116 different species on the River Campus, the Eastman School of Music, Memorial Art Gallery, Medical Center, and the Mt. Hope campus. The University’s Horticulture and Grounds Department—a unit of University Facilities and Services—oversees and cares for the collection of trees year round.
“It is a great honor to be recognized as a Tree Campus USA each year for the past decade, and it’s the result of the Horticulture and Grounds team’s dedication to providing a beautiful campus for our University community,” said John McIntyre, manager of Horticulture and Grounds. “We have an impressive, diverse collection of tree species within our campuses and we take great pride in caring for them and educating our community and guests about our arboretum.”
To earn the honor this year, the University again surpassed the Tree Campus USA program’s five standards, which include maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures toward trees, an Arbor Day observance, and student service-learning projects.
To view a new interactive map with identifications of trees throughout River Campus, visit: https://urochester.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=643bedf828dd4303beca5bf989cc108b
The Arbor Day Foundation has helped campuses throughout the country plant thousands of trees, and Tree Campus USA colleges and universities invested more than $51 million in campus forest management last year.
The work directly supports the Arbor Day Foundation’s Time for Trees initiative—an effort to plant 100 million trees in forests and communities and inspire 5 million tree planters by 2022.
Last year, Tree Campus USA schools&mdashincluding the University of Rochester&mdashcollectively planted 34,515 trees and engaged 33,432 tree planters.
For more information, visit: www.arborday.org/programs/treecampususa/.
