“GEM OF PRINCETON”: Marquand Park will be celebrating the grand opening of its Children’s Arboretum on Saturday, April 27 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. The festivities will include a ribbon cutting with the mayor, a treasure hunt for families, and free trees given out by the Marquand Park Foundation, which was recently honored with an Award of Recognition from the town of Princeton. (Photo courtesy of the Marquand Park Foundation)

By Donald Gilpin

The Marquand Park Foundation, a nonprofit that works with the town to take care of the park, received an Award of Recognition at last week’s Princeton Council meeting and is planning to celebrate next week.

“We owe a lot to them,” said Council President Jenny Crumiller. “Anyone who’s been to Marquand Park knows how magical and beautiful it is. This organization has caused the park to be the way it is.”

The park and the foundation will be celebrating with the grand opening of its Children’s Arrboretum on Saturday, April 27 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the park on Lover’s Lane. The Foundation will be giving out free little trees, and the festivities will include a ribbon cutting with Mayor Liz Lempert, a treasure hunt for families, and the opportunity to plant a tree.

Participants can plant their tree in the arboretum’s raised beds or they can choose to plant it somewhere else in the park. They can also take their tree home and plant it in their own yard. 

“The Children’s Arboretum will be a place where children ages 5-15 can learn through hands-on experiences how trees grow and about the amazing collection of different trees in the park,” wrote Marquand Park Foundation Vice President Welmoet van Kammen in a press release.

Marquand Park was created in 1953 on a 17-acre expanse of land given to Princeton by the Marquand family “for use as a public park, playground, and recreational area for the benefit of the people of Princeton and its environments.”

In 1954 volunteers came together to establish the Marquand Park Foundation to help the town take care of and raise awareness of the park.

“They worked with the municipality, cleaning up the park, performing physically hard work every week,” Crumiller said. ”They also donated their professional expertise and artistic talents. This group exemplifies the highest ideals of public service.”

Foundation President Bob Wells, a board certified master arborist and associate director of arboriculture at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, described Marquand Park as “a very special place and an important place for a variety of reasons.”

In addition to being an officially registered arboretum with more than 800 trees of 172 different species, he said, “The park has always been geared toward kids. The sandbox is always in use. It’s a multi-use park. People play touch football, baseball, and soccer, have picnics, but it’s mostly for parents with kids.”

Wells pointed out that the park features a free library of children’s books “located in a four-foot-high tree trunk that looks like a gnome house. It’s stocked with 100-200 books.”

On its 17 acres, the park also features a relatively untouched wooded area, meandering paths, clusters of trees, and wide vistas. It has a historic collection of trees and shrubs and is an unusual example of 19th-century landscape architecture.

“We’re blessed with great volunteers,” Wells said, praising the efforts of the Saturday helpers who collaborate with members of the Foundation and workers from the Public Works Department. “We all play a role in keeping the park going.”

Looking back over the many years of the park’s history, former Marquand Park Foundation board member Roland Machold noted, “As open space becomes ever more precious, this park is becoming more and more meaningful.”