“Every day is awesome” for Rodney Eason, director of horticulture and landscape at the Arnold Arboretum. Purchased by Harvard in 1872, the land was converted into a park by the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the founding director of the Arboretum, Charles Sprague Sargent. Today, the Arboretum is a living museum, a research institution and one of the nine public parks that form Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
Eason, a native North Carolinian, expected to design golf courses professionally after working on them in high school and college, but found himself drawn to the ornamental plants on the course rather than the course itself. After a brief stint in landscape architecture, Eason earned a master’s degree in public garden management from the University of Delaware and has since worked at public gardens, including the Longwood Garden in Pennsylvania. He applied to work at the Arboretum in 2023, describing it as “the perfect marriage of my interests, which is landscape design and ornamental horticulture.”
At the Arboretum, Eason said his “primary job is to cultivate the people first, because without the people who take care of this landscape, it wouldn’t live up to the history of what Olmsted and Charles Sargent envisioned when they first constructed it.”
In addition to the Arboretum, Olmsted designed many of the other parks in the Emerald Necklace. “The Emerald Necklace, to me, is one of the most inspirational landscapes that I’ve come across,” Eason said. “I tend to see both the Arnold Arboretum and the Emerald Necklace as landscape for the people, because it’s democratic, it’s free, it’s open and accessible to everyone.”
According to Eason, the history inherent in landscape is part of what makes it beautiful. “Gardening and horticulture in general is the slowest of the performing arts. … We try to imagine what that shrub or tree is going to look like, 5, 10, 15, 20, even 100 years from now,” Eason said. “We’re just setting the stage for a play that’s going to act out over a century.”
According to Eason, preparing this “play” is a group effort. “I love a collaborative design process because I think the more people you get involved with creative ideas, the better the outcome that it’s going to be,” Eason said.
When he designs a landscape, Eason begins with a site visit and a Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats assessment, considering factors like soil quality, drainage and nutrition. Then he drafts a sketch, jotting down “notes and bubbles and opportunities,” which he presents as a visual aid to his team. Based on their feedback, he makes another sketch and the process goes from there.
Recently, Eason and his team brainstormed how to preserve a popular photo spot in the Bradley Rosaceous collection: a metal archway grown over with a sprawling rose called the Crimson Rambler. To prevent the ground from getting worn, they considered whether to add stones beneath the arch, and, if so, what shape. “That’s the fun part of my job,” Eason said, “to geek out on, you know, all the details as it relates to making sure that we preserve this historic landscape while, again, accommodating the wear and the tear that comes from people loving it.”
Designers have to balance the history of their gardens with aesthetic trends, which are “tied to culture.” For example, while the Arboretum’s design used to be very regimented, with short-mowed lawns and annuals planted on a grid, the Arboretum and general landscape trends are moving towards natural landscapes, which are better for the environment. “Being a public landscape, we have to move slowly and take calculated risks, because it has to fit within our mission as an organization,” Eason said. “Over time, the public becomes more used to the looser style of landscape and landscape design as it relates to what’s acceptable.”
Eason prioritizes public experience and accessibility in his designs. He discussed an entrance adjacent to Roslindale, an environmental justice neighborhood “that had been let go, and we worked with the city of Boston over the past few years to revitalize that tunnel, provide a new planting palette and a welcoming entry to the residents along Washington Street in Roslindale.”
When he observes people in the park, Eason sees the fruits of his efforts. “Very few people look at their phone when they’re walking around the Arnold Arboretum,” Eason said. “They’re either talking with someone that they’re walking with; they’re listening to a podcast; they’re looking at trees; they’re looking at the landscape.”
Eason finds hope and purpose whenever he sees people drawn to the arboretum. He understands the connective power of nature first hand: He proposed to his wife in an evergreen magnolia at Duke University, a type of tree that can be found at the arboretum. Now, he sees others get their engagement photos taken at the arboretum.
“I’m like, ‘You could have picked anywhere in Boston and you picked here,’ that tells me that they love it,” Eason said. “This is what Olmsted intended when the emerald necklace and the Arnold Arboretum were designed, is that it would connect people to the natural world.”
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