Free Public Gardens of Washington: Yakima Area Arboretum

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In this episode of The Evergreen Thumb Colleen Adams-Schuppe, the executive director of the Yakima Area Arboretum, shares her journey and the arboretum’s history, highlighting its unique origin story as a community-driven initiative. She discusses the challenges and successes of curating a living landscape in a desert climate, the significance of various garden spaces, and the role of educational programs in fostering community engagement. Colleen emphasizes the importance of volunteers and community partners in maintaining the arboretum and outlines future aspirations for its growth and development.

• Yakima Area Arboretum
• More information on the Master Plan https://www.ahtrees.org/about/masterplan/
• Information on the Arboretum’s signature annual events, including the Arbor Festival (largest educational event) and Luminaria (largest event) https://www.ahtrees.org/education-activities/events-and-classes/
• Garden Conservancy Northwest Network
• Facebook Yakima Area Arboretum | Yakima WA
• Instagram Yakima Area Arboretum (@yakimaareaarboretum)
• Creating Robust and Resilient Green Spaces for Nearby Nature

Evergreen Thumb (00:00)

Welcome to episode 67 of The Evergreen Thumb.

What can a walk through an arboretum teach you about gardening in a place like Yakima, where climate, water, and plant choices all matter?

Guest Introduction

My guest today is Colleen Adams-Schuppe, and she is the executive director for the Yakima Area Arboretum. Colleen is here today to tell us all about the history of the Yakima Area Arboretum and what it has to offer the public both as a public green space and as an opportunity for teaching gardening.

Evergreen Thumb (00:33)

Colleen, thanks for joining me today. Welcome.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (00:35)

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Evergreen Thumb (00:37)

Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and the work that you do for the Yakima Area Arboretum?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (00:42)

Sure, my name is Colleen, and I am the executive director at the arboretum in Yakima, Washington. I’ve been involved with the arboretum for going on about 26 years now in various capacities. I started out as a volunteer, was on the board for several years, and then became staff. I actually was a co-executive director, and I ran the Arboretum with a good friend of mine. We did that together from about, I think it was 2006 to the end of 2018 when she retired. And then in 2019, is when I took over as full-time, just in time to go through COVID and all the other fun. It has been crazy busy ever since. It’s wonderful. It’s a fun job.

The Origin Story of the Yakima Area Arboretum

Evergreen Thumb (01:27)

So, can you tell us a little bit about the story of the arboretum and how it came to be?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (01:32)

That’s a good question because I love our origin story, I think. As you get a chance to visit and look at other beautiful gardens and arboretums around the country and around the world, you start noticing that a lot of those places actually start as something else first. So a lot of public gardens tend to start as somebody’s private garden, you know, and maybe they were incredible landscape designers, or they collected plants of some kind, you know, maybe Trillium, or they had just whatever they had famous stuff. And so that when they passed, their garden might become a public garden, right? So a lot of public gardens started out as someone’s private garden first.

And then a lot of our arboretums usually start out as tied to a college. It’s really common, you know, it’s either tied to a forestry program or a horticulture program. The campus itself could be an arboretum. They could actually curate the collection of trees that are on the campus. Usually, those things are tied to something else first. But what I love about our arboretum is that it actually started out because the people in the community basically wanted one.

In central Washington, we’re essentially in the desert.

There’s not a lot of natural green spaces here, other than it’s a big farming area. This is the hub of agriculture for the state. So through the power of irrigation, we can have green spaces. Where the arboretum is located now was actually a farm. So they raised vegetables here and they had a chicken operation.

Simultaneously, while that was happening, the Central District of the Federation of Garden Clubs was super active. They had like 36 different garden clubs, and it ranged all throughout Central Washington, really all the way up to Cle Elum all the way down to Prosser. They were very active. I know that the arboretum wasn’t created overnight.

So I imagine at some point, in the 50s, early 60s, the conversation must have started amongst this big collection of garden clubs that they had wanted in the arboretum. So they started to look for, where could we do this? Where could we have demonstration gardens? Where could we create this beauty spot? And when they learned that the city of Yakima had acquired this old farm to turn it into a public park.

Then these garden clubs led by Rose Druse went to the city and said, hey, how about you let us turn it into an arboretum and look at all the great things that we could do. And so the city agreed. And so together they were actually building the arboretum. But eventually the city said, whoa, too much work to curate a collection of plants. Not anything we want to do. We don’t have anybody that can, you know, carry this on. But hey, if you want to do it, we’ll let you use the land, and then you can do with it as you wish. But we will help you to the best of our ability, help you care for it, at least to the standards of our other city parks that we’re going to be developing. So the group said okay, and they actually formed a nonprofit at that point. And so the nonprofit, the Yakima Area Arboretum and Botanical Garden, was actually founded in 1967 and then for the first 20 years, it was all volunteers.

So all these garden clubs, a lot of them would adopt a different section of the grounds for example, we had a yellow bed, and we had a perennial bed, and there was probably a Dahlia bed at the time too. The Iris Society had a bed, and everybody kind of had their own little chunk, and together it became the arboretum.

As far as I know, the only garden that still exists, sadly enough, is the Rose Garden. That one was founded by the Lower Natchez Garden Club, and about 10 years ago, the youngest member of the club, who was 85 said, you know, gosh, we’re done. The garden is yours, and they handed it over. And so we’ve been sort of struggling to maintain it to their standards ever since.

So the first 20 years, it was all volunteers and truly amazing for me to come in afterwards and see of the incredible plant material that we have at the arboretum. Weeping Douglas firs and amazing green ashes and things that you just don’t find at your local nursery.

And so I think about these people 50, 60 years ago, prior to the internet, how do they find this stuff? You know, who were they calling? What nurseries were they checking out? Were they traveling and you know, were in China, and came across a really cool thing, and then brought it some of the stuff that we have is really incredible. And, it was planted 50 years ago. Unfortunately, a lot of times, being volunteers, records were not always kept really stellarly, or those records could be in somebody’s basement, you know, in town. And we just don’t know where they’re at.

For a lot of the material that we do have, we know at least when it was planted, but we don’t know where it came from. So that is, it’s too bad. So those early volunteers were pretty amazing. Then after about 20 years, they realized, ooh, boy, maintaining 30-plus acres of irrigation is a lot of work. So then they hired a gardener. And so they hired their first staff person, Mario, and he came in, and he cared for that.

Then eventually, so that now we have about four people who work in the office. And then we have two full-time people outside. And this year, we’re kind of doing some transitioning. As we’ve grown, we realize, oh, we need this kind of staff or we need that kind of staff. So that’s kind of where we’re at right now. We’re like, okay, we’re transitioning, we’re growing. What do we need? What’s our next step? So those are the things that we’re working on.

Evergreen Thumb (07:11)

That’s a fun story because it is kind of unusual for a bunch of garden clubs to get together and say, hey, let’s create an arboretum.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (07:17)

You know, one of the things I’m a part of a group, I’m part of the National Garden Conservancy and the Garden Conservancy. Actually, we have a Northwest Network, which is a really wonderful program. So if there are any other public gardens, arboretums that are will be listening to this, it’s a really good program, and it’s a way for everyone to kind of network together. And what I’ve enjoyed about it, we usually get together twice a year. It’s a way for me to personally like meet my counterparts at other gardens.

And this is what I’ve observed. It’s like, OK, the beautiful Dunn Garden. It was started by the Dunn family or the Bloedels was started by the Bloedel family. So you start to really notice that there’s really very few. I think the Bellevue Botanical Garden, it might have started as a private residence, but it’s really grown beyond just the residence that was there, and it’s not named after a family.

A lot of you’ll see PowellsWood, you know, the Longwood Gardens back east, you know, they all started as someone’s private garden first. You get a bunch of determined people together, they need just a little bit of inspiration. And it’s just amazing, I think, what all these volunteers did, these clubs.

Evergreen Thumb (08:31)

It’s funny that you mentioned the Bellevue Botanical Garden because, actually the episode that was just released was with James Gagliardi of the Bellevue Botanical Garden. So then that’s what kind of kicked off this series of public gardens across Washington.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (08:44)

There’s not a lot in the way of public gardens in central Washington, and then eastern Washington, you get like the Finch Arboretum and there’s some in the Spokane Area for sure.

Curating a Living Landscape in a Desert Climate

Evergreen Thumb (08:54)

So how is the arboretum curated and stewarded as a living landscape in Yakima in a desert climate, no less?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (08:59)

Yeah, you know, it’s a challenge. You know, one of the things I always tell visitors when they come to the arboretum, and we’re really fortunate that this building that we’re in is a multi-purpose building. There’s classrooms, an atrium, we have a gift shop in it, so we get a lot of tourists. And I always love in our little atrium, our kind of the reception area, we have these wonderful windows that look out over the arboretum.

And I point out and I’m like, everything you see out in front of there, it’s artificial. This does not grow here naturally. We are shrubsteppe. Cactus and sagebrush, and bunch grasses, that’s the natural landscape.

So irrigation, we’re all part of the irrigation district, both the arboretum and a lot of the people, even private residences in town, they’re also on irrigation water.

The wonderful thing about gardening in central Washington, not only do we have this rich volcanic soil that has lots of good nutrients in it, it’s good soil to grow things in, but with the water in our 200-plus days of sunshine, the things that you can grow in central Washington is really the gamut. If you want a hot, Mediterranean-style garden, you can have that. If you want a lush green Seattle, Douglas fir, rhododendron-style garden, you can have that too. You just have to be clever about what you do. So the diversity of stuff that you can grow here is really pretty amazing despite being in the desert.

So, those are the fun things about gardening here. That’s why we have such a large Master Gardener program, you know, growing vegetables. If you want to grow it, chances are you can grow it here. You might have to be a little clever about what you’re growing, because some things can be a challenge.

For example, like you can grow rhododendrons, but you really do have to protect them from the winter sun so that they don’t come out of hibernation. So you might grow them on the north side of your building. So if you can be kind of clever about what you do, you can just really have everything, which is a lot of fun.

For us here at the arboretum, a lot of what we decide to grow, we’re very informal about it. So it’s a lot of experimentation. We’ll hear about trees or our members will tell us about things that they’re doing in their gardens,  and we might say, wow, that sounds really neat,  maybe we can do that here as well. So then we might see if we can get that to go.

So like we’re not just, oh, we’re gonna grow everything from this region or we’re gonna do this from that region. It’s very experimental, a lot of just to see what we’re growing. We all love shade trees. So we always want big trees here and then we have a whole variety.

So what I love is that informal nature of it that we can do what we want and play, and that also goes for any kind of classes that we have, you know, if someone wants to learn about raising chickens in the city, well, we’ll have a chicken class. If someone wants to learn about dahlias or peonies or whatever, then we’ll have those classes. We can do what we want, which is really fun.

And then for the curation of our collection, though, in general, most of that is done by volunteers. We have committees, especially the plant sale committee,

We have a spring plant sale, and a lot of times they will look like, my gosh, look at this amazing thing that just came on the market or, this is really neat, we want one. And then they’ll come to me and say, Colleen, you we can get this in and this in and this in, what do you think? And then it’s like, a lot of times it’ll be, okay, whatever you want, you know, cause I’m always game to try stuff too. Then we’ll see about bringing those in, and if we have space for it, then we’ll do that.

And then we have another committee called the master planning committee. So one of the things that we did is we spent about five years prior to 2020 working on a new master plan for the grounds. We were finished with it, unfortunately, in March of 2020, right when COVID hit. So things got delayed a little bit, but we have picked it up. And so we’ve been working on some of the stuff in our master plan, so we’re a little more thoughtful now about what we plant, but there still is a little bit of, you know, I’ve got a wish list of trees and woody shrubs that, you know, if the opportunity arises, I can either find that or it would work well in a new garden that we’re putting in, then that’s, we’ll throw stuff in. So we do have a master plan that we’re working on. So it’s not completely, you know, a free-for-all out there.

But if it is something that we really like and we can work it into one of our gardens, we’ll do that. But like I said earlier, one of the things that we’re looking at this year is we’re realizing that as the arboretum develops and we’re working on our master plan, that we do need to be more thoughtful about the curation of the collection. So we are actually looking at hiring a full-time curator.

With volunteers, as wonderful as volunteers are, which we depend on that tremendously, but still they go on vacation, or they decide, you know, we’re gonna move, or we’re gonna go be gone for six months or be snowbirds or whatever. So it’s really hard sometimes to depend on those people totally when, you know, we’re having issues now or we need to make decisions by next week.

And so having a curator here to do that is kind of where we’re headed. That’s what we’re doing now.

Signature Garden Spaces and Future Developments

Evergreen Thumb (14:29)

Nice. So you mentioned earlier the Rose Garden, and I actually I was at the I think two years ago I was there, and I walked through the Rose Garden, and because it was in full bloom at the time it was beautiful. So what other kinds of signature garden spaces are there throughout the arboretum?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (14:33)

Just to go back to the Rose Garden, though really quickly, what I’m excited for with the Rose Garden this year. So remember I said the Lower Nachez Garden Club was the group of mostly women, a group of gals that created the Rose Garden to begin with. So that was their thing, one of the garden clubs that helped found the arboretum. And the last member who basically handed over the keys and said, it’s yours now, good luck. That was Fran Sweezy.

And Fran Sweezy has since passed away, but her daughter, Candy, has actually picked up the gavel from mom. And so now Candy is back helping, and the garden is seeing some new developments thanks to Candy. So Candy’s coming in. She inherited her mom’s Rose Garden in town. Fran had like five or 600 roses in her personal collection.

Candy is retired, and so she has inherited her mom’s garden. And fortunately, she also has her mom’s love for roses. And so Candy is helping us form a group. We’re calling them the Rose Rangers. So the Rose Rangers are gonna come in. We have a whole program started for them to help with the garden. So we’re gonna train a group of volunteers, you know, how to care for the roses and have a schedule of maintenance. And Candy’s helping us with this.

Because we’re a really small staff taking care of 46 acres. These specialty gardens, this is part of why we need a curator. Because these specialty gardens, like the roses, they require a tremendous amount of work. Pruning weekly. And we have deer, so you’re trying to deal with the deer and all these other things. So we’re going to be setting up a schedule and a group of volunteers that are going to help us maintain that.

And so that’s going to take, start taking place this spring. So I am super excited about that because I love roses myself and, without having a whole group of dedicated volunteers to it, it just becomes, something very hard to maintain and it’s so well loved.

And we’re also gonna be expanding on the garden too. We’ve got like two or three new garden beds planned for it.

Right now we have about 300 roses in there. So that will probably add, I think, maybe just shy of another 100, spaces for another 100 roses. So we have that garden that’s gonna be seeing some growth this year. The past few years in the spring of 23, we put in the new winter garden, which is when you visit the Jewett Interpretive Center, which is our main building, just on the west side of it is the new winter garden, which is looking amazing. And that garden really demonstrates to folks that you can have a beautiful garden all year long.

You know, a lot of people love to plant a garden. They just think about flowers in the summer or green grass and trees, you know, that maybe provide some shade, but they don’t always think about having a beautiful garden through the winter. Like the winter is just a space you have to get through before you get your beautiful flowers again, right?

But here you really can have just an amazing, beautiful garden with things that actually bloom all year long. I mean, right now, if you went out to the garden, here we are in January, you know, the winter heath is blooming. So we have little purple and white flowers out there. So it’s just as an example. So the garden’s lovely.

We have on the north side of our Japanese-themed garden, we have a whole big area that we’re developing now called a deciduous forest. So it’s gonna be mixed trees. In the fall of ‘24, we planted I think about 70 new trees out there. So that is the deciduous forest and it’s a multi-year project. So we’re kind of in the middle of that. We’ve got the trees planted.

We also need to start planting some understory plants and some signage and things, but it’s got new irrigation out there. We have the new trees. That’s one of the projects that we’re working on too. Thanks to a gift from Elaine Jones, we will be getting a new reader board.

So not garden-related things, but also important, so we have a new, we’re gonna do a new LED message center on our reader board that you see from the freeway. So yay, it’s been out of commission, it has so much sun damage. We can’t put any messages up there without the letters falling off to their death at the bottom. And so we’re getting a new LED message center. They’re pretty expensive, so we’re very thankful to have those contributions. And then we’re also gonna do a mural. So we’re gonna bring some more public art to the arboretum.

So we’re doing that this year too. We’re excited about that. And that will be on our, the Jones Center, which is one of our maintenance/ storage/ classroom buildings. It’s at the north end, and we’re going to put a mural on that. So pretty, pretty excited about that happening too. Yeah.

Celebrating Nature: ArborFest and Community Events

Evergreen Thumb (19:46)

Nice.

So one thing I noticed too is that there’s a lot of open space, grassy areas, and things. And I would think that would make it really nice for people to just come and hang out and enjoy the space.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (19:54)

Mm-hmm.

Well, it’s kind of interesting with our lawn. You know, one thing that you will note in Eastern Washington with sunshine, our lawn loves water, and it loves sunshine. So you will find that if you take care of your lawn in Yakima, it will be like a carpet. Yes, we do love lawns, and behind the building, so we have like a great lawn. So we’ll always have that big, great big lawn that’s out behind the building because we have a lot of events. It makes for a great event space for our big public events that we do. But we’re actually slowly working on getting rid of some of the lawn in other parts of the arboretum.

So one thing that people would know, like if you haven’t been to the Yakima Arboretum before, right, it’s an old farm, so it’s flat. So then you can imagine seeding it all with a lawn that you have to mow regularly. And then you put trees all in through there. Then slowly you’re starting to develop gardens in and amongst the space. So here we have a lot of lawn in between everything. But we are trying to remove some of that lawn just so that it has less to maintain, less to mow.

So we have 30 acres essentially that we’re actively curating the collection within that 30 acres and a lot of that has lawn. And so it does take all day long to mow it. So we’re actually on the process of slowly removing it, not having as much, but we will always have the great lawn behind the building where we have events because it’s perfect for that.

And then, yeah, so we get a lot of people that come out and just enjoy walking because there are shady spots, a lot of mature trees. A lot of folks love to come and just sit under a tree, read a book. We don’t get as many picnickers as you would think, but we do get people out picnicking. Again, they love to picnic under the flowering cherries in the springtime. There are two events over the course of the year where people love to come and take pictures like crazy. And it’s when the cherries are blooming in the spring and in the fall, when we get the fall color. It’s pretty great.

Engaging the Community Through Nature Programs

Evergreen Thumb (22:25)

I know you were talking about you have classroom space and you have events. So how do you use that space to support learning and garden stewardship, and community engagement?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (22:28)

Mm-hmm.

Well, you know, one of the things I’ve really noticed too, working here and having an opportunity to visit other gardens and, and I don’t know that other gardens have this experience as much as we do, but one of the things I’ve really noticed about the arboretum is it’s very much an important cultural space. I always tell people, know, there’s like seven essential things that gardens do for the community.

Hopefully, I can remember what all those seven things are at the top of my head. But, you know, I feel like we are definitely in that bucket. You know, it’s like you, you are a tree museum, right? You’re preserving plant species. You’re a place for animals, you know, it’s a wildlife sanctuary, birds and

You know, we have all kinds of critters out here. Deer, I mentioned earlier, you know, they’re a pain, but you get all kinds of critters, birds. So it’s a sanctuary for that. You’re a place where you preserve plant species, right? So, like I said earlier, we have some really unique tree species out there. So that’s one of the things that we do for our community.

We’re an educational place. We have classes for adults. So sometimes we have a naturalist program that adults can go through. We also have a really popular nature day camp for kids in the summertime. And then we also have the first licensed nature preschool in Eastern Washington, too. So we also have a preschool for kiddos. And I love the fact too that with the preschool we have that.

Evergreen Thumb (24:05)

Nice.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (24:13)

And then now there’s other programs too. They’re outside all year long or during the school year, they follow the Yakima School District schedule. So even in the winter, they’re outside making snow angels and whatnot, educational things. It’s also an important cultural spot. So, like the arboretum, this is a place where people love to get married. This is where you come to get proposed to. It’s where you come to celebrate a life.

It’s pretty fun sometimes, you’re looking out the window, and you see people with their setups for proposals and whatnot, it’s always fun to see. And the other thing too as an important cultural spot. Like we have to put it on our calendar and give each other warnings, especially prom nights for example: prom, homecoming.

We are literally invaded on multiple nights because there’s multiple high schools, so we are invaded by every teenager, their parents, and their photographers for about 90 minutes. It’s like a migration of beautifully dressed young people.

And then we get that over multiple nights, because it’s all the different high schools. But this is where they come to take their pictures before they go to dinner, and they go to the dance. And so to be a part of that tradition is kind of fun.

So you have that important cultural thing. We do a lot of events here too. So we have, believe it or not, ArborFest, which is the Arbor Festival is actually how I got involved with the arboretum back in 2000. So we held our first Arbor Day event in the year 2000. Maybe we had a hundred people show up for it.

Today, now today, 26 years later, we’ll have like 35 to 40 organizations out and they each have a table. And then they’ll do, we have themes. Every year we do a new theme.

So it could be like, you know, walk in the woods, what people do when they’re in the woods, or flower power or whatever. But we try to do new themes and challenge all the different organizations that attend, that participate, you know, to try to do something to match that theme, just to keep it interesting every year, right? And it has grown now. It’s well over, gosh, if it’s nice weather, we’ll have about 3000 people that come. So it’s really grown.

It’s supposed to be one of the largest Arbor Day events in the country now, which is pretty amazing. We’ll give away, you know, we’ll just say 500 trees to families. And so they get like a little seedling, and they get to pot it up at the event so that they can say they planted a tree on Arbor Day and then they can take the tree home and try to grow it in their yard.

We don’t just give people any old trees. They have to go to the tree doctor. We call them Dr. Tree-rific, which is our volunteers. And then they will tell you like, you know, I live in an apartment. We’ll be like, well, do you have a patio? And they’ll be like, yes. And like, okay, well, here’s a blueberry plant. You know, it’ll be like something tiny. And then, but if they have a big space, then maybe they can have, you know, a big maple tree or something. We usually have about five or six different types of trees that we’ll give out, depending upon what they have to work with.

Our largest event that we do is in December, it’s called Luminaria, and basically, it’s a winter walk. So we’ll line about a mile long pathway through the arboretum with candles. And then we’ll have a bunch of twinkle lights, like, you know, around the building and the Japanese garden, and then people go on a winter walk. Then we’ll get about, it’s about 5,000 people, will come to that one. So it’s a pretty popular event.

So then we have those are two big, two big community things that we do. And then we have, like I say, a lot of other little classes throughout the year. So educational events are really important. And that’s how we use the building too. So the building gets used through all those events.

We also operate a venue rental business. So, besides our classes and events that we do, we have a whole venue rental business. We do have a lot of meetings, business meetings. Gosh, like I said, celebrations of life, weddings, they do that here too. So we have that whole venue rental business thing. We’re an important tourist attraction in town.

A lot of people don’t realize how important public gardens and arboretums are to their communities. You don’t always think about it because I always feel like your public gardens and arboretums are just quietly in the background, looking amazing, just supporting their community in a peaceful, meditative way. And if they weren’t there, it’d be kind of like, whoa.

I know, it’s a little bit hard to explain how important, but when you think about your own neighborhood and you walk through your own neighborhood and you’re like, you always want to look in this direction because that person has a beautiful tree, you know, your neighbors landscapes make or break your neighborhood sometimes, you know, so you’re walking through, it’s like, I really love this neighborhood. It’s like, what do love about it? You know, and it’s because of those trees and those gardens that are quietly doing amazing things. It’s like, in the background.

And I feel like it’s the same way with your arboretums, but your arboretums and public gardens are major tourist attractions. Because when you think about it, like when you travel, and you know, a lot of people don’t really put this together, but when you travel, chances are you go to a new city. One of the things that you seek out is a park or a green space, someplace where you can go and check out.

Maybe, you know, you’re in the gardening business, so maybe you’re like, I want to go check out that nursery. They’re supposed to have amazing plant material there. Chances are you are seeking out those green things; there are more people, they say, who visit public gardens and arboretums than like watch football, you know. It’s a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business, your public gardens. So when people come to Yakima, you know, they come, they visit here.

They might come from Seattle for the day, for example, and just drive over and come to the arboretum, maybe do a little wine tasting, visit a fruit stand, and then they head back, right? So our presence here draws people to visit our gift shop, which, you know, is taxes, and maybe go to a restaurant, so public gardens all throughout the nation are really important parts of their communities.

The Role of Volunteers in the Yakima Area Arboretum’s Success

Evergreen Thumb (30:57)

So you mentioned volunteers again. Let’s talk about the role of volunteers and community partners in the arboretum and how they fit together, and how, like you mentioned, large projects and how they help with their tree inventory.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (30:58)

Sure.

You know, yeah, so the arboretum still depends really heavily on our volunteers. And I also think, too, what’s really great about the arboretum and like a lot of public gardens and arboretums is that, you know, you get a lot of people that cross your path, and I feel like that is so true here.

I just love the stories, as I said about the Rose Garden, for example, you know, and then looking at how you had Fran and then now her daughter, and they’re carrying on that tradition of caring for that. For example, Karl Graf is one of our volunteers and a big supporter of the arboretum. His dream, I just, I love this, his dream was always as a kid to have his own arboretum, for example.

But he grew up to become an engineer and left the area, but has since come back and retired, and he’s creating his own arboretum at his house. But he has also become involved with our arboretum.

I just love the fact that people throughout the history of the arboretum will kind of come and go, and they’ll just make it a better place by being here for a little bit. Like Karl was really active in helping us get the winter garden, for example. So that’s one of the things he came in. He’s like, okay, we have this master plan. What’s our first project gonna be? What are we gonna do? Let’s go, crew, you know, let’s do this. And so through his leadership, we have, you know, the winter garden and have a start on the deciduous garden.

And then he’s like, you know, Colleen, we really need a good way to start keeping track of all the trees and woody shrubs in the collection. He’s like, you know, there are programs out there now, not as many as you would think, but there are programs out there that you can, you know, like online databases. So we did some research, and we found that there was one called Arbor Pro.

Now, what’s interesting about online inventories for trees and plants, there are a lot of programs out there that are geared towards municipalities, your cities and towns, that keep track of the trees that they are responsible for. So trees in parks, trees in medians and sidewalks, those kinds of things. So there are a lot of programs out there that are geared towards in-house use only.

There are really very few programs out there, I’m serious, like just a handful that are designed to educate the public to put their inventory online so people can search it. So people outside the organization, so that you have your security features and stuff, so that they can’t make changes to your inventory, they can just look, right, and have searchable features.

But we went out, and Karl, being an engineer, started working with a company called Arbor Pro, and then they started developing a way for us to have our inventory online and searchable. So starting in ‘24, Carl and one of the Arbor Pro staff had come out and started inventorying all the trees in the collection. Now, we did have an inventory that all our volunteers in the early days did, but it was all based on a grid system.

So it’s like, well, if you walk 50 feet that way and then head east 20 feet, then you’re going to find this maple tree. And if you go 10 feet, you’ll find that one. It was all, it was very good in the early days. Then, and then the volunteers kind of stopped doing that for a little bit, and then trees would just be planted. So things got a little messy.

Karl spent about six months or so going out and inventorying all the trees in the collection and the woody shrubs. And then we had an intern who came and helped us input all the roses. So we had 300-some roses in the collection. And then our local Master Gardeners stepped in to help, and they helped us with all the attributes. So we have, here’s the whole list. Then the Master Gardeners went out and, like, well, here are all the things we want to know about each of those trees.

And so everybody all together, all these volunteers working together now means that our inventory is searchable online. So if you go onto our website, you can see the whole collection. So all the trees and woody shrubs, as well as the roses, are all searchable online. In our other gardens, like all other little perennial plants, you’re not going to find them in there, but just the trees, the main things that we actively curate are going to be.

And so it was just really a wonderful gift of time and energy that Karl and the Master Gardeners, that they all just did to make it happen. The arboretum would totally benefit from all the people who come along. The staff, we’re just here trying to make it easy and maybe guide them in this way or guide them in that way. But really, I feel like at the Arboretum, it’s all the volunteers that make the magic happen.

And then, you know, just there’s Karls and the Candys and just other people that will come along, and they make their mark, you know, and the whole community benefits for it.

And what’s great is we’re free to visit. So if you can get yourself here, you can go out and wander around. We don’t charge you to see it. So that’s a wonderful thing.

All those cherries are thanks to our sister city in Japan, Itayanagi. So they gifted us those trees about 40 years ago. And they, our sister city, still every year, every July, they send a delegation out to visit us and to see their trees.

And they have a little lantern in the Japanese garden that they gifted to us as well. It is a very small town, with about 15,000 people, and they’re also an apple producer, just like we are. So we grow a lot of apples here, and so do they. That’s part of why they’re our sister city.

So yeah, it’s just really wonderful. I think every July, a group of high school students, the mayor, and some other city dignitaries will come. They visit us, and they’ll spend about half an hour with us, taking lots of pictures. And then they go, and they visit with the mayor and do some other things while they’re in town. But I just think that’s wonderful. I love that they, that that is so important to them, that they make that effort to come and visit us every year.

I love all the stories that come with the different parts of the arboretum.

Future Aspirations for the Yakima Area Arboretum

Evergreen Thumb (37:57)

So what does the future look like for the Yakima Arboretum?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (38:01)

Who are we? Our future, huh? What does it look like? Well, like I said right now, I feel like we’re going through a little transition period. I feel like we have some challenges, like a lot of other nonprofits do.

Funding is always a big thing, especially as the utilities and things, just the electricity, you have all these things of costs that are going up. To me, that’s a little scary, you know, honestly, those things are a little scary. And then as we have been growing and our new gardens are growing, our staffing needs are changing a little bit with that too. Back when we first hired Mario, we just had the one full-time employee, and he was even seasonal.

At the time, he worked with us through the growing season. And then once the irrigation shut down, he would take off and go, be gone for a few months, and then come back, you know, and he worked with us for years, but as we’ve grown and developed, you know, your staffing needs change. So just like nature, we need to evolve. And so we’re in an evolving point right now as we figure out what we need to do for the next step, but we’ll figure it out.

I’m just at this right moment, I’m still thinking it over, I’m not sure. It’s like, what do we want to do? There are so many opportunities out there. I just have to figure out which ones. That’s my job is to help guide us in that way. So for us, really, continuing to grow, the arboretum, someday,

We have about 15 acres on the east side of the grounds, which is our natural area. I’m pretty happy that this last year I got a grant from the Department of Natural Resources to come up with a design for these 15 acres. And so I have that design now. So this is kind of like my stretch goal is trying to figure out how to get us to that point to get the funds because there’s like a $2 million project, know, so I’ve got to come up with a lot of funds for it. But it would create a half-mile loop, and it would plant about 400 more trees. So we would be creating some pathways.

See, we had a fire there that I mean, one of the things that Yakima has to deal with all the time in the summer, especially in our nature areas, our natural areas, is fire. So in ‘23, that natural area burned. It did have trails, it did have things out there, but it all burned up. And the trees were heavily damaged, and so it just needs, it needs a new plan. And so that’s one of our stretch goals. So we’re kind of, always have that on my back burner.

You know, and as any nonprofit will tell you, you kind of have your projects on the shelf. And if an opportunity comes along, if some volunteer comes along and says, wow, I love natural areas and I have a couple million dollars, you know, or whatever, you know, then you pull that project off the shelf, dust it off, and say, here you go. But I think a lot of that will probably be paid for with grants and stuff. But that’s another project that we’re going to be working on.

Right now, this year, we’re going to get our reader board fixed and get the mural. That will be fun to have because we totally need more public art. We don’t have enough public art at the arboretum. But we have a lot of challenges too with art and with anything, really, just because we are a public place.

So whatever we do really has to be able to withstand the rigors of being in a public place with lots of people, and you get a lot of abuse sometimes, but for the most part, everybody’s pretty good to the arboretum. Just lots of feet, kids running around like crazy, grabbing labels off of trees, you know, just little things like that. So whatever we do has to be able to withstand the rigors of being in a public garden. So sometimes with art, it’s a little challenging.

Evergreen Thumb (42:10)

I can see how that would be.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (42:11)

Yeah, I always have to tell people that, it’s like, could it survive? Can it survive? You know, it doesn’t. Even our own preschoolers sometimes we have to tell them, you know, get out of the, you know, get out of the beds. Don’t do that, you know, or no, don’t pick those things. But they’re adorable. When they come to visit us in the building, we just, I just love them. They’re so cute. And it’s really funny too, after the preschoolers come in the building, I kid you not, we find sticks everywhere.

So there’s just like sticks on the windowsill, sticks on the floor, sticks in the bathroom, sticks on the back of the toilet seat. You know, they come in, and they leave their little crumbs behind them, but they are so adorable. I love that program. I love watching them run around. Those kids, I know, you know, if people have a nature preschool in their community…

Evergreen Thumb (42:40)

Yeah

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (43:03)

And if at all possible, I really do recommend it because I think what’s really great about seeing the kids in the program is, know, and all the programs that we do, we try to give them a love of nature because they’re the stewards, right? They’re going to grow up and be stewards of the earth. And you want them to have to love it first before they’ll even think about caring about it. And that’s what I love about seeing the kids, even as young as the preschool ones.

Because they just learn so much, and it’s fun at the end of the school year. Here’s your three and four year old and they’re giving their parents a tour of this great big place and they’re hauling them around and they’re like this is the tree that we climb and this is the stump that we stand on and sing our songs and you know, this kind of thing and you see them and they’re just like so smart.

Afterwards, you know, it’s just, it’s incredible to see how much they’ve learned because at the preschool, like for example, if they want to climb a tree, the teacher will say, all right, go for it. We’ll just kind of stand back. And the kid has to figure out how to climb the tree. They may or may not figure it out. So that the only time the instructors really step in is if they need help. You know, it’s like, all right, now I’m up the tree, and I don’t know how to get down. It’s like, all right, then we’ll help you with that. But they have to problem solve when they’re out there.

If they want to do something, they have to problem-solve. And then you really see that with the kids and how much they’ve learned and matured by being in this program. I just wish every kid could do it. So it’s really great.

Final Thoughts on the Yakima Area Arboretum

Evergreen Thumb (44:41)

Any final thoughts you’d like to share about the garden?

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (44:45)

No, but you said you had come out, right? So you were here a couple of years ago, you said?

Evergreen Thumb (44:49)

Yeah, it must have been ‘23 because the Winter Garden was brand new. It had just been planted. Actually, I was there for a Master Gardener meeting. So we had some time before the meeting started. So, fellow Master Gardeners and I walked from the building, we walked, walked through the Winter Garden, and walked out to the Rose Garden and a little further out before we ran out of time. We didn’t get to explore nearly enough of it.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (45:15)

Sure. Well, great. Well, how often do you get to come over here? Do you ever been, have you been over since? No? Well, you gotta change that.

Evergreen Thumb (45:15)

We got a good peek.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (45:31)

It’s helpful too if you have a partner who enjoys looking at gardens. Like in my household, it’s kind of a challenge because, of course, I want to stop for every cool garden that’s along with me, but they don’t always want to do that. So if you travel, especially with my husband, and he goes, look, there’s a garden. You want to go see it? And I’m like, yeah, of course I do.

Evergreen Thumb (45:40)

Right.

Yeah.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (45:51)

It makes my heart sing if I get to go see that. So that’s what I love about the Garden Conservancy, and being a part of that group is really amazing. That’s like how I know James from the Bellevue Botanical Garden, and some others, is through that program, because you just get to go and you get the behind-the-scenes look at the different gardens, which is super fun because I’m one of those nerdy people. I’m like, I want to know where they store things, and you know, what kind of shed is this, and where do you keep your soil? And you know, just kind of the workings of stuff that’s behind the scenes, I am really interested in. Usually on those tours, I can have a little bit of that.

But I don’t think that I would have the opportunity to see as many great gardens and to learn about them so much as I have through that program, and the people in the gardens are just great. Garden people are good people, you know, like the Master Gardeners, good people, super fun people.

Evergreen Thumb (46:52)

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

Colleen Adams-Schuppe (46:59)

Sure, thanks for letting me talk at you for an hour.