DOWNLOAD AN AMBLER ARBORETUM VISITOR MAP (PDF). text version

The Green Mulch Tour (PDF). Please download the PDF and take it with you. 

This self-guided tour takes you through many of the Arboretum's gardens highlighting plants that can be used as living, or green, mulch. These plants accomplish everything mulch does while providing other ecosystem services such as pollinator support. Planting plants where you would usually mulch is a sustainable gardening option saving money, time, energy and resources. 

For our General Self Guided Tour: Senses, Seeing(PDF). please download the PDF and take it with you. 

For our general self guided tour please follow along with the instructions below.

The tour begins at the Administration Building. Take the walkway to the Woman’s National Farm & Garden Visitors Center opposite the Red Barn. From here follow the path to the Hilda Justice Artifacts Collection, open by appointment. 

The first garden, just outside the Hilda Justice Building, is the Viola Anders Herb Garden. The garden, built by students and faculty in 1992, displays a collection of culinary, dye, and medicinal herbs.

Continue through the Bell Tower and turn right around Dixon Hall to enter the Arboretum’s centerpiece garden – the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Perennial Garden. This magnificent garden was first planted in 1928.

Walk through the Bright Memorial and turn left into the Woodland Garden. This naturalistic garden is beautiful year round, particularly in spring with blooming bulbs, shrubs and flowering trees.

Turn left from the Woodland Garden to enter the Ground Cover Garden, designed and installed by Landscape Architecture and Horticulture students in 1993-94.

Walk toward the Bell Tower to arrive at the Formal Native Plant Garden. A redesign in 1995 features a central allée of black gum trees, which provide shade for native perennials.

Return to the Formal Perennial Garden, this time turning to the right and into the Louise Stein Fisher Garden. Raised beds showcase dwarf evergreens and a Japanese maple in this intimate space, dedicated in 1971 to the former Dean of Women.

The next garden is the Albright Winter Garden dedicated in 2008. Its unique plants create seasonal interest from late fall to early spring with colorful branches, berries and early-flowering bulbs.

Follow the path across Albright Walk toward the Greenhouse to visit the Colibraro Conifer Garden, dedicated in 2010. Donated by the Colibraro family, these exquisite conifer cultivars create a unique teaching garden.

Opposite the Greenhouse, take the path into the Ernesta Ballard Healing Garden completed in 2009. This garden honors a pioneering woman in horticulture, alumna Ernesta Ballard. It features a central labyrinth and rain garden and was developed from Temple's 2006 Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Philadelphia Flower Show exhibit.

Walk behind Cottage Hall to our final stop, the Wetland Garden. Sustainable elements include recycled-glass pavers, biological filtration of campus storm-water runoff, a solar fountain, and native plant communities.