According to Kathy Salisbury, Director the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, the trees of the Ambler Arboretum are “our silent teachers.”
“They are living, breathing textbooks. The trees have taught thousands of people — of diverse ages and background — not only who they are and how to tell who they are, but how they grow, the conditions they need and how resilient they are,” she said. “Trees help solve ecological problems in the landscape.”
At Ambler in Bloom, the Ambler Arboretum’s signature garden party fundraiser, trees will take center stage. The theme for this year’s event, which will take place on Saturday, October 4, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., is “The Story Our Trees Tell.”
“The story of the Arboretum’s trees goes back to the early 1900s when this agricultural land was being transformed into a place of education with the establishment of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. That is when a lot of the trees started being planted here. Over time the collection has grown, the diversity has increased and the gardens were developed,” said Salisbury. “There is a lot to learn from trees but they’re not telling their stories through words. With this year’s Ambler in Bloom, we thought it would be interesting to have different interpretations of storytelling — artists telling the stories through paintings, poetry readings related to trees, and hands-on opportunities to add to the story of the Arboretum.”
According to Salisbury, Ambler in Bloom this year “is the story of people’s connections to trees.”
“When I teach Woody Plants, the first thing I always do is ask my students to draw their favorite tree — you can ask almost anyone what their favorite tree is, and they’ll have an answer. We’re celebrating that connection between people and trees,” she said. “Knowing that almost everyone has a tree that’s special to them in their history and has a story connected to trees, this is an opportunity for people to come and share those stories and hear the stories of others.”
Within the Arboretum, “generations of people have sat under the shade of our trees, they’ve had important conversations, fun conversations, rejuvenating moments and moments of reflection.”
“Trees are our secret keepers; they are always there. They are characters in the story that are always present, where everything else happens around them, through them, with them,” she said. “They are integral to all of our stories in the Arboretum.”
Among the characters in the Arboretum’s story are the survivor trees that appear relatively unscathed following the tornado in 2021, Salisbury said.
“Our Big Weeping Beech is a good example as is our Atlas Cedar, our big Honey Locust and our champion Filbert. They were all damaged in some way, but it is hard to tell that today if you do not know what you are looking for,” she said. “Then there are the survivor trees who were significantly damaged; they were altered in ways that make them almost unrecognizable even to someone familiar with their types of trees. Over the last four years, some of these trees have bounced back and shown resilience and regrowth in surprising ways. There is not a lot of information out there about how trees will respond after catastrophic damage.”
Often trees suffering tornado or hurricane damage are taken down, Salisbury said.
“We’ve been able to watch how they’ve formed new branches, and see flowers blooming on them, and the birds who have built their nests in them. We’ve seen them bear the brunt of storms since then and done just fine,” she said. “These survivor trees exhibit the resilience of nature and I think they represent hope — even when things are damaged, there is so much good to be found. There is so much potential.”
According to Salisbury, joining the survivor trees are the 1,054 trees that have been planted since the tornado.
“They, of course, represent the future. As horticulturists and gardeners, we know we are planting for the future — as the saying goes, we’re planting trees whose shade we’ll never sit under,” she said. “As we look beyond today, we must think about the future of the campus, the future of horticulture, of our climate and try to determine what students might need to know years from now and what trees will be able to teach those lessons. We know some of our survivor trees will do just that and we’re also choosing new plants and designing new learning spaces accordingly so that our trees continue to be the silent teachers of our programs for students and visitors.”
Acres of Experiences
During Ambler in Bloom, step into our historic gardens for an interactive and elegant brunch where every tree becomes a storyteller.
Guests will enjoy signature botanical cocktails, live music by an acoustic guitar duo and presenters that blend poetry, nature and sensory exploration. Each experience offers a window into the healing and growth of the landscape since the 2021 tornado.
Ambler in Bloom will also feature a silent auction, a brief live auction and a journey through some of the Arboretum’s newest plantings.
Live Works by Botanical Artist
Three botanical artists — Joe Sweeney, Robby Schlesinger and Sharon Gross — will create live works inspired by the gardens, each illustrating a different aspect of the Arboretum’s trees. From three separate spaces in the Formal Gardens, their works-in-progress will create dynamic and visually rich storytelling that guests can watch take root in real time.
“A program like Ambler in Bloom educates people about what is going on with the trees, for example how much air conditioning just one tree can give you. There is a lot going on with a tree,” said Sweeney. “I’m hoping through my art, people can see how they can go out in nature and make something tangible and lasting.”
With the Arboretum, “people can get an idea of the correct placement of plants, the full size that they get to be,” said Gross.
“As a master gardener, I know that you need to put the right plants in the right place. Otherwise, it’s not going to grow properly,” she said. “Having an arboretum to show you that concept and having professionals around to answer those kinds of questions is really such a benefit to the community.”
The Art of Bonsai
Watch the meticulous artistry of bonsai with Michael Persiano, a master in the art of bonsai tree design and cultivation. Persiano will complete the styling of a Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Kosteri’ — a true dwarf Hinoki with attractive bark and lush green foliage. The piece will be detailed, wired, and refined live during the event before becoming the first offering in the live auction!
“I am an advocate of horticulture practices and creating beauty through an understanding of how nature and, in this instance, potted trees can be transformed into living art,” Persiano said. “Sharing the experience of creating a bonsai moves many individuals to seek a closer relationship with the natural world. Temple's initiative to bring together various masters and craftsmen motivates individuals to deepen their life experiences and to continue endless learning.”
Tree Tales Told in Haiku
A haikuist with a vintage typewriter will compose your personalized poem. Guests will be asked “What’s a personal tree memory, lesson or favorite?” Think loosely — a childhood memory, a tree you always return to, something you’ve learned from observing nature, or even a metaphorical connection. Take yours home as a keepsake and listen for a small selection of them to be read by the poet during brunch.
Hands-on Connections - Bulb Planting and Tree Ring Storytelling
Join Arboretum Gardens Manager Stephanie Bross in the Beech Grove to plant bulbs that will form a flower path in the meadow. This growing tradition, begun at Amber in Bloom in 2024, expands year by year — a gift to the Arboretum’s future gardens.
Mariana Bonfim, Managing Director of the Temple Ambler Field Station, will “read” tree rings like palm lines, sharing the history of the Ambler Arboretum’s trees through their patterns of growth and resilience.
“I think the importance of community programs like Ambler in Bloom is to really welcome the public to our spaces, our beautiful Ambler Arboretum, the Temple Ambler Field Station, and connect the public to the science that we’ve been doing,” Bonfim said. “The methods, for example, for reading tree rings can actually tell us a lot about the disturbance histories of these organisms, which can help us predict what could happen in the future. By teaching visitors how to read those tree rings during Ambler in Bloom, I’m teaching participants how to do science and maybe they can look at a tree in their backyard or a tree in a park and try to reconstruct what happened in that tree’s life and how we can use that information to protect the future.”
Gardens Filled with Poetry and Music
An acoustic guitar duo featuring Boyer College of Music and Dance Jazz Performance alumnus Chris Dolhancryk and current Boyer Music Education student Patrick Crowling will keep live music flowing throughout the gardens! Every 25 minutes, the music will pause for poetry readings, offering moments of reflection on trees and nature themes beneath the canopy.
Featured readers will include Kathy Salisbury, Director of the Ambler Arboretum; Paul Buchanan, poet, 2025 Temple creative writing alumnus and current adjunct professor; and Gerald (Jerry) Burnsteel, beloved teacher in Temple’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Unique Spirits
Known for creating premium spirits with big, bold flavors, Philadelphia Distilling utilizes hand-hammered copper pot stills and wooden fermentation vessels to ensure high-quality products. Ambler in Bloom will feature several botanical-forward signature cocktails crafted from their unique spirits.
Learn more about Ambler in Bloom’s many presenters and activities at ambler.temple.edu/bloom.
Funds raised at Ambler in Bloom, Salisbury said, are used in the Arboretum to help support the ongoing maintenance and upkeep of the various gardens “and help with installing new garden spaces and reimagining existing spaces.”
The Ambler Arboretum as Part of Temple’s Story
The Ambler Arboretum connects Temple faculty and students “while also connecting Temple with the community as a whole,” said Salisbury.
“It gives people an entry point to Temple in a way that might be different that what they are used to thinking about when they think about Temple University,” she said. “As an outdoor classroom and an educational support facility, we also work very hard to ensure make that our gardens continue to be relevant and safe and useful by all of our faculty, staff and students.”
The Arboretum is “Temple University's outdoor classroom, living laboratory and public botanical garden,” Salisbury said.
“The Arboretum provides a unique space that isn't replicated anywhere else throughout the university for people to learn, whether that's learning about plants or landscape architecture, or history or business, or architecture or engineering; or learning to work together as a team,” she said. “Students take part in hands-on experiential learning and our researchers from throughout the University also have an opportunity within our 187 acres to study a wide variety of topics. We’ve had this more than 100-year tradition of hands-on, experiential learning opportunities and we plan to continue that.”
Something that sets the Ambler Arboretum apart from other public gardens in the region, Salisbury said, “is that students build spaces here.”
“They are learning by doing and then, in turn, those spaces become teaching places so that other students learn from and in those spaces,” she said. “We have gardens that were once part of Philadelphia Flower Show exhibits or part of classroom student projects. Today, they are a unique part of our story.”
Learn more about the Ambler Arboretum at https://arboretum.temple.edu.