Davidson College Arboretum extends across Davidson College’s six hundred-acre campus in Davidson, North Carolina, reflecting a vision first advanced in eighteen fifty-five to shape the grounds into a living collection of regional plant life. Student tree plantings in eighteen sixty-one and a faculty call in eighteen sixty-nine to represent the state’s forest growth and regional botany guided that effort. Over the next century, supervisors and landscape architects added native Piedmont species and selected exotic plantings. Support received in nineteen eighty-two helped formalize the campus as a national arboretum in nineteen eighty-six. About three thousand woody trees and shrubs are now labeled, and the arboretum remains open to the public.