UP ON THE Mountain
The Mountain Top Arboretum, which sits at elevation 2,400 feet in Tannersville, N.Y., is the Catskill Park’s only public garden. Like the rings of its giant hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis), its growth and expansion has been slow and steady, culminating this year in the completion of a timber frame Education Center to facilitate the third tenet of the arboretum’s mission: to offer a diversity of programs for the education and pleasure of the public.
The arboretum’s roots took hold in 1977 as a privately funded test site for a collection of cold-hardy trees—mostly oaks and conifers—that would survive harsh USDA Zone 4. Over the years, it has developed into a world-class public garden dedicated to the continued care and supervision of the original hardy tree and shrub collection as well as native-plant communities of the northeastern United States. Trails and boardwalks connect 178 acres of plant collections, natural meadows, marshland, forest, Devonian bedrock and even a
