Nevin Welcome Center

Start your visit to Cornell Botanic Gardens at the Nevin Welcome Center—home to our visitor services staff, a gift shop with light refreshments, art displays, interpretive exhibits, restrooms, and a multipurpose room.

More about the Nevin Welcome Center

Featured

Be sure to visit these locations this season.

Mullestein Winter Garden

Find plants with interesting color, texture, and shape, which add beauty to the winter landscape.

Natural Area

Native Lawn Demonstration Area

Designed to replace conventional lawn with native low-growing grasses, which only require mowing once or twice per year.

Zucker Shrub Collection

This area's “garden rooms” show perennials, shrubs, and ornamental grasses can be used in inspiring ways.

Gardens around the Nevin Welcome Center

Nevin Welcome Center

Start your visit to Cornell Botanic Gardens at the Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center.

Class of ’53 Container Gardens and Tropical Garden Beds

Draw inspiration for container gardening from these arrangements of tropical plants.

Groundcover Collection

Around the Lewis Building, find a variety of herbaceous perennials ideal for shady or sunny gardens.

North Walk

Explore perennial plants from North, Central and South America suited for full sun.

Robison Herb Garden

Find over 500 varieties of herbs throughout 17 theme beds in this renowned garden.

Young Flower Garden

Explore a collection of flowering plants that hold symbolic meaning by cultures around the world.

Hillside Garden

This garden features spreading groundcovers good for stabilizing slopes.

Mullestein Winter Garden

Find plants with interesting color, texture, and shape, which add beauty to the winter landscape.

Comstock Knoll and Rhododendron Collection

Explore over 100 varieties of rhododendrons and a rich mix of shrubs, trees, and herbaceous perennials on this small hill.

Heasley Rock Garden

The garden was designed to represent alpine habitats such as scree, moraine and rock outcropping.

Bioswale Garden

Perennials, grasses, and trees here filter runoff from the parking lot before it flows into Beebe Lake.

Pounder Vegetable Garden and Climate Change Garden

Explore heirloom and commercial varieties of food plants grown around the world and see plants growing in a high tunnel under predicted future climate conditions.

Conifer Slope

This area features most of our extensive conifer collection, including firs, pines, and spruces.

Kienzle Overlook

Enjoy the view from this overlook, which displays dwarf conifers, perennials, and small flowering trees.

Botanic Buzzline

This pollinator pathway was developed by four Cornell undergraduates to address pollinator decline in the Ithaca community.

Mundy Wildflower Garden Formal Plantings

Draw inspiration for using native plants in your gardens from formal plantings at the entrance pathways of this enchanting woodland

Pinetum

This small grove of pine trees features eight species.

F. R. Newman Arboretum

There are specialty gardens and groupings of trees and shrubs within this beautiful 150-acre area.

Cornell Class of 1923 Flowering Tree Collection

Trees in the Flowering Tree Collection were selected for their beauty and small stature.

Cornell Class of 1901 Nut Tree Collection

The majestic black walnut, butternut and heartnut trees, hickories and chestnuts here were planted in the early 1960s.

Newman Meadow

Meandering paths mown in the field provide visitors the chance to walk through a community of grasses, insects, and birds.

Floriculture War Memorial Trail

The garden along this trail features boggy areas and running water, and shows ways to make wet areas into attractive landscape features.

Treman Woodland Walk

This intimately-scaled, hemlock-shaded, streamside garden displays moisture-loving plants that cannot be grown well elsewhere at Cornell Botanic Gardens.

Zucker Shrub Collection

This area's “garden rooms” show perennials, shrubs, and ornamental grasses can be used in inspiring ways.

Schnee Oak Collection

As a large part of our oak collection, this collection of 50 different oak species, cultivars, and hybrids, is used to showcase oaks and contribute to oak research.

Jackson Grove

This steep-sided bowl is home to our Dorothy Hemp Hill Magnolia Collection as well as a yews, oaks, and elms.

Sculpture Garden

These abstract, ten-ton concrete sculptures were created in the 1960s by Cornell undergraduate architecture students.

Houston and Grossman Ponds

Houston and Grossman ponds, located in the heart of the arboretum, were created in the early 1980’s to add an aquatic ecosystem to our collections.

Newman Overlook

One of the highest points at Cornell Botanic Gardens and on campus, Newman Overlook provides a wondrous view of both the arboretum.

Beech Collection

This collection is composed primarily of American beeches (Fagus grandiflora) and European beeches (Fagus sylvatica) that perform well in our area.

Palmer-Kinne Dogwood Collection

Showy flowers and fruit, rich fall colors, and ornamental bark make the Palmer-Kinne Dogwood Collection a fascinating garden to visit in all seasons.

Cornell Class of 1938 Native Maple Slope

This slope is home to maples native to New York State.

Jennings Crabapple Collection

This collection of crabapples represents the best cultivars for this region.

Peterson Oak Grove

This collection of hybrid oak trees shows both natural plant hybrids and horticultural specimens created artificially through breeding.

Harder Watercourse Garden

This beautifully designed garden showcases how a garden can be both beautiful and hard-working.

Goldsworthy Holocaust Memorial

The Garden of Stones symbolize the tenacity of life, honoring those who died in the Holocaust and those who survived.

Urban Tree Collection

This collection consists of trees that are being researched for their use in urban environments, where site conditions are often poor.

Arboretum Pocket Gardens

Discover small “pocket gardens” around of the parking bays, trailheads, and benches throughout the Arboretum.