Thanks to two leadership gifts totaling $4 million, The Arboretum at Penn State will create and grow the Children’s Garden, an interactive place for children to learn and to explore the natural world. A gift from Edward R. and Helen S. Hintz will fund the construction of the space, and a gift from Charles H. “Skip” Smith will create an endowment to maintain the garden and develop its educational programs. A previously announced gift from Marcia Day in 2008 will provide endowment support for children’s education programs.
The overall vision for the Children’s Garden is to create a delightful, interactive, learning environment not only for children ages 3 to 12 and their families, but for children of all ages. The central theme is based on central Pennsylvania’s geomorphology and its particular flora, fauna, and culture.
To understand the connection between the subterranean world and the surface habitat that it supports, visitors will meander through a valley prairie landscape, travel through caverns and a grotto, cultivate crops and plants, pass through a tree’s roots, and walk between anticline and syncline formations to discover the ecosystems that live within them. Major components will be an entry court entitled, Childhood’s Gate (featuring canopies of colored glass casting color, plant, and insect shadows and whimsical quotes onto the pavement), Central Valley (featuring a Native American encampment, small cloche-shaped greenhouse, and open spaces to explore), and The Grotto, Fossil Ridge, and Mushroom Hollow (revealing minerals and plant and animal life forms in secretive places and from long ago times).
To learn more about the future development plans for The Arboretum at Penn State and Children’s Garden, visit the Arboretum online at www.arboretum.psu.edu.
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