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Adkins Arboretum
Adkins Arboretum is a 400-acre native garden and arboretum located within Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. The grounds contain five miles of paths. Its gardens contain a "living collection" of more than 600 species of native shrubs, trees, wildflowers and grasses, used to promote land stewardship practices in the Chesapeake Bay region. Wikipedia
In 1972, Adkins Arboretum was slated to be the Maryland state arboretum. In 1980, the Arboretum opened with a donation from its first benefactor, Leon Andrus. The Arboretum was named after the Adkins family, an Eastern Shore family who were avid conservationists and longtime friends of Andrus. Andrus also established a private foundation, the Friends of Adkins Arboretum, to oversee the Arboretum's development. Upon his death in 1989 at age 101, Leon Andrus left a bequest to the Arboretum's endowment. The Arboretum was founded with the mission of displaying all the forest types of Maryland. By the late 1990s, with a new mission in place to display and study the Delmarva Peninsula's indigenous plant communities, the Friends of Adkins Arboretum proposed to the state that they manage the Arboretum. A public/private partnership was made official in 1998, with the state granting a 50-year lease to the Friends of Adkins Arboretum. Today the Arboretum sees over 30,000 visitors annually and is self-supporting, receiving grants from federal and state agencies and from private foundations, as well as donations from members and income from program fees and gift shop and plant sales. Adkins Arboretum is the only arboretum or public garden that focuses solely on plants native to the Mid-Atlantic coastal plain. Because of its location on the Delmarva Peninsula, at the junction of the piedmont and the coastal plain where northern and southern plant life overlap, it includes diverse habitats that support more than 600 species of native shrubs, trees, wildflowers, grasses, and ferns. By walking the Arboretum grounds, visitors can experience native plants in a natural setting, in ecological restoration projects, and in cultivated gardens. The Arboretum is a model for land stewardship, playing an important role in protecting the health of the Chesapeake Bay by preserving and restoring the region's native flora.