Polly Hill Arboretum is everywhere this week. From pizza for plants at Flatbread to artistic renderings of nature, the arboretum promises to have you covered.
On Tuesday, July 9, a portion of all the evening pizza sales at Flatbread will benefit the arboretum. Polly Hill staff will be there and a chance to win a Polly Hill-grown plant is part of the event.
Polly Hill’s vision of growing an arboretum began in 1957 and the 70-acre garden that is her legacy first opened to the public 15 years ago. The mission of the Polly Hill Arboretum is simple; to share plant knowledge with students of all ages. Polly’s voice is still sometimes heard on the local NPR station saying, “Educate yourself. Learn. That’s the fun. The learning is the fun.”
If trees could talk what story would they tell? Tom Clark, curator at Polly Hill Arboretum, knows better than most.
On Tuesday, June 11, he will lead a walking tour and share stories about the trees of the arboretum. Meet at 10 a.m. at the arboretum, 809 State Road in West Tisbury, for an hour-long trek. Cost is $5 or free for Polly Hill members.
The rafters echoed with laughter as 12 high school seniors gathered in Polly Hill Arboretum’s far barn to commemorate their graduation with a simple lunch. These students are the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School’s Class of 2013, the school’s largest graduating class since its first class of seniors graduated in 2001.
In the Panama Canal the grand challenges facing the world are played out in miniature. Here freshwater management, deforestation, biodiversity and global warming have converged to pose economic challenges that the rest of the world may not face for decades. From his perch in the middle of the rainforest, Biff Birmingham, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), has made this convergence the focus of his research. He spoke at the Polly Hill Arboretum on Wednesday night.
The Martha’s Vineyard Museum is close to selling the West Tisbury land once envisioned as its future home to the neighbors, the Polly Hill Arboretum and the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society.
The sale is likely to be completed by the end of the week, arboretum executive director Tim Boland said. Surveying work was underway and everything was going very positively, he said.
“We both could see real utilitarian needs [for the land] ... and we feel strongly about keeping it in the agrarian spirit,” Mr. Boland said of the unified purchase with the agricultural society.
