National Arboretum Framework Plan

Reed Hilderbrand’s framework plan recognizes the Arboretum’s distinguished legacy and preeminent reputation as the foundation of its identity and educational offerings. The proposed visitor experience of the Core is redirected, beginning as a sequence from a new entry at the Bladensberg Road, an urban thoroughfare. Visitors travel through site features that descend from its early history as a farm to its decades of development as a renowned scientific research facility focused on agriculture. A honed vehicular and pedestrian circulation system, supported by wayfinding, establishes clarity and hierarchy while reducing the amount of impervious pavement on the site. The new system brings visitors to expanded collections and visitor services at the Core, and to a myriad of new outlying destinations across the property’s uplands, midlands, and dendritic ravines. Strategic investment in the Core’s modernist compound provides opportunities to develop a visitor’s center where staff, volunteers, and visitors co-mingle to learn about plants, historic and new research findings, and stewardship practices in today’s world.