| Highland Park began as an idea in the minds of two great nurserymen, George Ellwanger and Patrick Barry. In 1883 they offered 19 hilltop acres of their nursery grounds to the City of Rochester for a memorial park. The city officials at the time refused the offer but by 1888 Bishop Bernard McQuaid, Dr. Edward Mott Moore, and Councilman George W. Elliot persuaded them to accept the land and establish The Rochester Park Commission. Dr. Moore became the commission’s first president.
When the Park Commission hired Frederick Law Olmsted to design the park, he advised the city to purchase land along the Genesee River, north and south of the city, to form a park system. Olmsted also recommended Calvin C. Laney for the position of Park Superintendent because his experience as a surveyor and engineer would prove invaluable in building the parks. The vision that Ellwanger and Barry had for Highland Park, that it would become an arboretum, was realized from the start. The two nurserymen donated specimens of every shrub and selected trees growing in their nursery to form the core of the arboretum.
In 1890 Calvin Laney hired a superb plantsman to supervise the planting and maintenance of the collection. He was John Dunbar, a Scottish immigrant who had worked on English estates before moving to Long Island. Dunbar ordered 1500 species of plants from different parts of the United States and Europe, and it was Dunbar who planted the first 100 lilacs. He contributed many new lilac cultivars during his tenure as Assistant Park Superintendent. Following Olmsted’s plan, he also planted 109 varieties of conifers in the pinetum by 1898.
A connection that would enrich the arboretum was that with Professor Charles Sprague Sargent, first director of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. Sargent became interested in Rochester and Highland Park though an article written by John Dunbar. His subsequent visit to Rochester initiated his return every fall for the next 20 years. As a result of this relationship, many exotic specimen trees and shrubs grow in Highland and Durand-Eastman Parks that were collected worldwide and sent to the Arnold Arboretum by plant explorer Ernest Henry Wilson, aka "China Wilson."
Many talented individuals contributed to the development of Highland Park including Richard Horsey, hired in 1904 to maintain and improve the herbarium, a collection of dried leaves, fruits and flowers used to identify and study plants. Bernard Slavin, who started his career at age 17 as a laborer in Genesee Valley Park, is credited with building the lilac and rhododendron collections well beyond their initial numbers and almost single handedly planting the Durand-Eastman Park Arboretum.
The Lamberton Conservatory on Reservoir Drive was built in 1911 in honor of Park Commissioner Alexander B. Lamberton. It houses a tropical forest display, desert plants, plants of economic importance and houseplants. The conservatory changes the seasonal flower display five times per year. Gardens surrounding the conservatory contain many interesting trees, shrubs and perennials. The annual displays of spring bulbs and later the unique summer annuals are a delight to visitors.
Take a Walking Tour of Highland Park |
