Blog & News Articles

Blog & News Articles

Levy Hernandez and Emily Griswold

Consider a 2017 year-end gift to support our Learning by Leading program

Your support for the Learning by Leading program helps us develop the environmental stewards of tomorrow. Also, ten percent of your gift to the Arboretum and Public Garden Annual Fund goes to the Friends of the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden Endowment which provides long-term support for our free, all-ages environmental education programs.

Vet med student, bird photographer extraordinaire

  • by Enrica Jiang
UC Davis second-year veterinary medicine student Shakuntala (Shak) Makhijani has always loved nature and animals, but only recently has she started producing breathtaking photos of hummingbirds in their natural habitat at the UC Davis Hummingbird GATEway Garden.
Representatives from Geocon, Inc.

Arboretum Waterway Construction Update 11.22.17

We’re still finishing up Phase One of the Arboretum Waterway Maintenance and Enhancement Project, but the construction fencing located in T. Elliot Weier Redwood Grove and Lake Spafford areas is now removed! We expect the pump controller to be programmed by the end of November. Once it is ready, we can turn the pump on and see the water flow over the weirs.  If the weather holds out, you can also expect to see some new plants getting planted around the weirs in December.
Arboretum Waterway with ducks

Arboretum Waterway Construction Update 10.26.17

The construction dam is down and water is now back in parts of the phase one project area. (Phase one of the Arboretum Waterway Maintenance and Enhancement Project extends from the easternmost portion of the waterway all the way to Wyatt Deck near Lake Spafford.) We're now working with contractors to test and optimize the pump system, which is an essential part of the waterflow in the Arboretum Waterway.

Arboretum Interns Support Native American Traditions, Restoration

UC Davis Arboretum Teaching Nursery personnel hosted a group of high school students participating in the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC) Youth Leadership Summit. These students, with connections to Native American tribes in California, Nevada, Hawaii and New Mexico, learned how to grow culturally important plants for a large-scale environmental restoration project on Maidu land in Plumas County.
West side of the UC Davis Arboretum

New landscapes provide important pollinator habitat

On the west side of the UC Davis Arboretum, close to its teaching nursery and near the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, is the largest Arboretum garden expansion in decades. The area features a variety of demonstration gardens and landscapes that highlight ecological solutions to common urban impact problems including water pollution, ground water depletion, and pollinator habitat loss.
Butterfly and host plant

Larval Host Plants for Butterflies

When creating gardens to attract butterflies, expand your palette beyond plants that only provide nectar for mature butterflies. There’s another type of plant, called larval host plants, that any well-rounded butterfly garden needs.
Person uses a hose connected to a nearby truck to fill a green plastic bag at the base of a sapling on the UC Davis campus

H2Oaks? Campus trees get their own Camelbacks

UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden’s grounds and landscape services team have started irrigating our younger trees with slow-release watering bags—a fancy description for those big green zippered sacks starting to appear at the base of young trees throughout campus.
Weirs under construction

Arboretum Waterway Construction Update 9.11.17

Four out of the five weirs for Phase 1 of the Arboretum Waterway Maintenance and Enhancement Project are complete, and the last weir should be finished by the end of September. This means we are very close to being able to return water to the channel and watch the water flow over the new weirs and through the wetland plantings.
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