The July Open House for the W. Gordon Arboretum will be held on July 20 from 1-4 pm. Five projects that were newly completed during the last month will be showcased.


The last details of planting and labeling of the Blight-Resistant American Chestnut trees are now done and the chestnut trees are thriving. Secondly, a major update of the labeling of Horseshoe Horticultural Grove and other ecosystem habitat sites was carried out. The most challenging project was the stabilizing of the upper waterfall and creek system. Under the guidance of Dr. Ray Torres of the Department of Geology at USC, we used a "gabion" model (literally "caged rocks") to control the force of the flooding water. A related project of this dam and spillway restoration was to create a spectacular panoramic view at the rockfall spillway, overlooking the cypress swamp. This area has been closed to all visitors because of the danger of loose rocks but a safe new spur path now leads down to the overlook and will be open for the July Open House. The fourth project was the replacement of the decrepit green slat benches in the Arboretum with handsome new basket weave metal benches complementing those in the CANDO Gardens. The fifth and final success was the harvesting of many new vegetables from our organic garden: Romanian garlic, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, rosemary, and dill.

The workshop for July will continue the multi-faceted theme of environmental awareness with a guided tour of two of the Arboretum's key new projects. The tour will visit the Chestnut Forest to demonstrate the design of the planting to accommodate the special needs of American chestnut seedlings; the tour will then continue to the nearby dam/spillway overlook. Come and see what 15 tons of granite rock can do to stabilize the waterfall and stream, as well as create an attractive and naturalistic waterfall.

Our warm thanks are extended to Dr. Nicholas Moore whose generous gift to the Arboretum has funded the surge of Arboretum projects completed in the past four months. We also thank Mr. Tommy Fallow of USC Landscaping, who has provided a half-time assistant to help on a daily basis with the many projects at the Arboretum. Mr. Gene Lindler has presented the Arboretum with a heavy duty commercial style lawn mower, and we can now efficiently and quickly control brush and vines in a substantial part of the Arboretum with this mower. Don't worry; if you love to pull vines out of the tree tops or yank out English ivy beds, we still have plenty of these to delight you on work project days! Dr. Ray Torres has constructed deep-well head stations for Geology class projects, to study water table levels in the Arboretum. We greatly appreciate the help and support of our Arboretum development projects by these individuals.