The mission of the UMass Lowell (UML) Arboretum is to develop and maintain a living plant collection that will provide a safe, attractive, educational, and sustainable urban forest that faculty, staff, students, and visitors can use as a resource for teaching, learning, and enjoyment.
Environment for Learning
Through their diversity and organization, the arboretum collections promote education and research opportunities. The collection acts as a living laboratory for researching urban plants and their responses to their environment including feedbacks between green spaces, built environment, and human health. The arboretum also acts as an outdoor classroom for hands on, land-based, and project-based learning that engages UML students and broader Lowell community.
Environment for Living
The arboretum is fundamental to the experience of the campus grounds. Trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants in the UML Arboretum are arranged to enhance the campus with their form, flower and foliage. Campus plantings seek to instill environmental stewardship, connect the campus community to timeless natural processes, and foster health and wellness benefits amidst the constant activity of urban campus life.
Symbolic Function
The campus landscape is an expression of the institution, its history and connection to the city of Lowell. Recruitment, retention, and lifelong ties of UML to its alumni are powerfully shaped by the campus landscape.
Ecosystem Functions
The campus landscape functions to regulate local climate conditions, improve air quality, and mitigate urban heat island effects. Campus plantings also provide erosion and sediment control and assist in the volume and quality management of stormwater runoff. By virtue of the arboretum’s proximity to Merrimack River open space corridor, it extends the habitat value of the local and regional ecosystem. The Arboretum landscape supports human health and well-being, providing for social connection, mental restoration and encouragement of pedestrian and bicycle use over automobile use.