A meeting in the spring of 2023 at Blandy Farm led to the happy outcome of a GCV Restoration Fellowship being awarded to Margaret “Greta” Mattheis, a second-year graduate student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia. Professor Emerita Nancy Takahashi, School of Architecture, UVA, and a member of the Friends of the State Arboretum (FOSA) asked the Fellowship Committee (a sub-committee of the Restoration Committee) if a GCV Fellow might be assigned to help map an in-depth inventory and assess the current state of the trail network at Blandy. Greta has a particular interest in the study of wayfinding and of using path design as a means to facilitate people’s relationship with landscape.

In her work she will be seeking better linkages and connections across the Arboretum, ways to improve visitors walking and learning experience on the trails, and exploring potential trail network expansion that highlights and preserves historic cultural features. The plant collections at Blandy were started by the first director Orland E. White beginning in 1927. Now, almost a hundred years later, there is a native plant trail and notable groves of oaks, ginkgoes, and conifers among other examples of the plant kingdom. How best to discover exciting uses for these places where visitors can gather is part of Greta’s and the Blandy Team’s mission. The State Arboretum has 200,000 visitors annually and close to 4,600 students were served by Blandy educational programs in 2022. Greta will make a presentation of her findings at the GCV Annual Meeting in May 2024, and her report will be filed in the archives of Fellow’s reports for future reference.

Ginkgo biloba

The ginkgo is a tree with a gap in its resume. It is a genus with a tenure that spans about 200 million years, back to the early Jurassic. During the Cretaceous, at the pinnacle of its career, at least a half dozen species of Ginkgo were spread around the northern hemisphere. Maybe it was the changing climate. Maybe it was competition with newer, more modern plants, but during the Cenozoic Era, the age of mammals and flowers, the genus went into a steep decline. By the Pleistocene, some 2.5 million years ago, its long run seemed over, and Ginkgo dropped out of the fossil record.

Like many of us, however, ginkgoes had a second act. Hidden away in China, beyond the eyes of western scientists, the Ginkgo species we know best, Ginkgo biloba, managed to avoid the fate of ginkgoes elsewhere around the globe. From China, they were exchanged with other Asian cultures, and when westerners finally stumbled upon them in Japan at the end of the 17th century, the tree began to recolonize a rapidly modernizing world.

The ginkgo is a tree that has something for almost everyone. The parallel veins of its leaves give it the common name “maidenhair tree,” a beautiful texture, unique among modern trees. They have virtually no pest insects, and their shape and pollution tolerance make them an ideal urban street tree. Detractors might point out that the flesh that surrounds ginkgo seeds has an odor that is unwelcome in polite company. However, the species has separate males and females, so if the seeds offend, a male ginkgo is your friend. Of all the remarkable things about ginkgoes, perhaps the most glorious arrives for about a week in the late fall of every year, when the leaves transition from green to golden yellow. The State Arboretum of Virginia at Blandy Experimental Farm features one of the largest groves of ginkgoes in the United States, and when those 300 trees blaze at the end of October, it is a sight to behold. The trees shine in synchronous color and tell everyone with eyes to see, the ginkgo has returned!

On the Road Again ... the Restoration Committee

Information about all of the GCV restoration projects dating back to 1929, can be found here.