Pender Community Arboretum Receives Excellence Award

Oct. 31, 2013

PENDER, Neb. — Pender Community Arboretum received the Affiliate Excellence Award from the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum. The annual award "recognizes an exemplary affiliate site that demonstrates excellence in collection development, maintenance practice and community engagement."

Pender is affiliated as a Community Arboretum of the statewide network. It encompasses Pender's city park, ball field complex, water tower, healing garden and other public spaces.

The award was given by NSA Board President Bill Posphical, who said, "Pender's landscapes not only encompass the community, they also bind it together."

Local commitment is evident in the amount of volunteer effort that goes into caring for the landscapes, the number of citizens who are memorialized through designated plantings and the fact that more than half of its funding is from local citizens and organizations.

One example of its value to the community is the landscape around the swimming pool, which was designed with trees and plants that help prepare Pender's agricultural education students for plant identification competitions. 

Wanda Kelly has been curator of the arboretum since its founding in 2002. More than 300 trees and 650 shrubs have been planted in Pender over the last 21 years by the tree board and arboretum committees. There were just 11 tree species represented in the city park in 1992, while there now are 113 tree species, including 15 species of oaks, 12 species of maples and 16 species of viburnums, to name a few.

Kelly has worked closely with the tree board, city council and the local high school. The Nebraska Environmental Trust provided funding for several large beautification projects in Pender that were overseen by NSA. Kelly also credited nurserymen Jim Kluck of Schuyler and Harlan Hamernik of Clarkson for their help in developing Pender's community landscapes.

The Pender Community Arboretum is one of about 100 arboretums in the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum. For more information about local or statewide public gardens, call 402-472-2971 or visit http://arboretum.unl.edu.