Dartmouth Tree Walk Tour #2: UMASS Dartmouth Campus

Intro:

Architect Paul Rudolph began working on a master plan for Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute (later, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth) in 1963. Rudolph, then the chair of Yale’s Department of Architecture, was already famous for his “brutalist” concrete structures. He had intended for the campus landscape to play an important role in complementing his bold buildings, but his intentions were never realized.

In the 1980s, the University’s landscape began to undergo many improvements thanks to Jim Sears, a botanist in the biology department. Sears started a modest arboretum, envisioning a botanical walk. An interdisciplinary course “Landscape and Garden,” taught by Professors Sears, Donna Huse, and Peter London, enlisted students for the job of planting a variety of plants to beautify the austere 710-acre campus. By the year 2000, nearly 500 trees had been planted, natives and non-natives from as far away as Asia.