University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum

The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum is a teaching and research facility of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the site of historic research in ecological restoration. In addition to its 1,260 acres in Madison, Wisconsin , the Arboretum also manages 520 acres of remnant forests and prairies throughout Wisconsin.
The UW Arboretum was founded on April 26, 1932 {Court, Franklin E. Pioneers of Ecological Restoration, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012, pp. 19-21.} when the UW Board of Regents accepted the deeds to 6 parcels, 246 acres of land on the southwestern end of Madison's Lake Wingra, creating the "University of Wisconsin Forest Preserve Arboretum and Wildlife Refuge" {Court, pp. 19-21}. The acreage at the time was mostly farmland fields and pastures. In 1933, G. William Longenecker was named Arboretum Executive Director {Court, pp. 63-64}. Longenecker Horticultural Gardens would be named after him. Aldo Leopold was named Research Director and also was the first professor of game management in the U.S.{Court, pp. 63-64}. He was also the first chair of the department of game management at the University of Wisconsin {Court, pp. 63-64.}. Leopold and other members of the first Arboretum Committee, especially Botany Professor Norman C. Fassett, proposed a research agenda around re-establishing “original Wisconsin” landscape and plant communities, particularly those that predated European settlement, such as tallgrass prairie and oak savanna. From 1935 to 1941 crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps, guided by Ted Sperry, a Ph.D. prairie ecologist, a prairie plant root specialist, from the University of Illinois who had studied with Prof. Arthur G. Vestal, provided most of the labor to accomplish this task {Court, Pioneers, pp. 100-107}. Such work would eventually become known as ecological restoration. Some of the first tall-grass prairie restorations in the United States took place at the Arboretum.

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