The Emily B. Clark Garden features a diverse collection of conifers, interspersed with broadleaf evergreens and deciduous flowering shrubs and trees that offer year-round ornamental interest.
Some plants in this garden are the most mature specimens in the University of Delaware Botanic Gardens. A few notable specimens include California Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), Magnolia (Magnolia x loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’), and Golden Larch (Pseudolarix amabilis).
History
Mrs. Emily C. Diffenback of Wilmington, Delaware, was an alumna and former president of the Delaware Federation of Garden Club. Emily donated funds to establish and maintain gardens around the University of Delaware’s campus in 1966.
Professors of plant science Dr. Charles W. Dunham and Dr. Richard W. Lighty designed this namesake garden as a place of beauty, respite, and education for students at the college as well as graduate students in the Longwood Program in Ornamental Horticulture. Recycled soil from the Wolf Hall excavation site (referred to as “the knoll”) was used to form one large mound and several smaller ones, along with a low stone retaining wall running through the garden’s length.
The Emily B. Clark Garden was formally dedicated in May 1973. Featuring ornamental plants and notable donations like a Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum) from Millcreek Nursery (the former nursery of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Frederick, Jr.), it laid the foundation for a vast woody plant collection and an official Holly Arboretum designation.