Collections are the core of any arboretum but there are many ways to collect plants. Our founder, Bob Lovett,  once said, “If you love your area of the country, make it beautiful.” To accomplish this, we seek to integrate our documented collection into a managed garden landscape mixed with native flora. We choose to use native flora because they are the most readily adaptable to our growing conditions and require very minimal input which allows us to focus on the plant health of our documented collection.

We hope to find those conifers that can grow and thrive on their own without intervention from us. We are not opposed to the wise use of pesticides but to artificially sustain a tree through frequent chemical control of pests is not in line with our mission of finding those conifers which are most suited to our area.