Two students from William Paterson University in Wayne have been working as interns at Laurelwood Arboretum, supporting the work of the Plant Collection Management Committee and earning course credits. The Plant Collection Management Committee uses a computer-based system to help identify plants throughout the arboretum and enter information about them into a database.

Karliann Blumenfeld graduated this year from William Paterson with a BA in Earth Science and a BS in Environmental Sustainability. She spent approximately 60 hours at Laurelwood identifying and tagging plants and researching the availability of rhododendrons at nurseries in an effort to locate plants that Dorothy Knippenberg bred or grew at Laurelwood. Karliann will soon begin a full-time job at Emilcott, a safety expert consulting firm in Morristown, New Jersey.

Kay Gardiner is in her third year at William Paterson and is majoring in environmental science and earth science. She logged 125 hours working with the Plant Collection Management Committee. “Plant identification, documentation and tagging are the activities that make Laurelwood a true arboretum,” said Elaine Fogerty, Executive Director of Laurelwood Arboretum. “Our interns devoted many hours to the painstaking tasks of identifying trees and shrubs, recording their location and navigating the arboretum to tag the plant material. Their valuable work moves us forward in our goal of becoming a fully accredited arboretum.”