A Visitor's Guide to the Arboretum

Dr. Fox came to Western in 1917 from Princeton University as head of the Classics department. He became Dean of Arts from 1919–1927, and was eventually appointed as President in 1928–1947.

In 1943, the Faculty of Arts and Science was created to formally recognize the important role science played within the University. During this time, the campus evolved with the addition of a new library, art gallery and observatory. He also wrote articles on plants and fishing for The London Free Press to increase awareness of Western through the paper's broad circulation.

Dr. Fox had a keen interest in botany and the rest of the natural world. The book, Sherwood Fox of Western, Reminiscences of William Sherwood Fox, published by Burns and MacEachern Ltd, Toronto, 1964, is a well-written account of his life and details Sherwood Fox's many interests. After reading it, one understands why the Sherwood Fox Arboretum was so named.

An arboretum is a botanical collection of planted and cultivated trees and shrubs that are used for scientific, educational, conservation, or ornamental purposes.  The Sherwood Fox Arboretum  (SFA) plays an important role in greening Western's campus environment in an aesthetic and functional way.

Conceptually, the Arboretum encompasses all the planted, manicured trees, and shrubs on campus and affiliated areas (Platt's Lane Estates, and the student residences Elgin Hall, Medway-Sydenham Hall, and Alumni House), excluding natural areas.

The fundamental objective of the Arboretum is to have on campus as many as possible of the several thousand kinds of temperate tree that could thrive in this climate. These woody plants represent a variety of native species that grow in temperate regions throughout the northern hemisphere, some a part of the  Carolinian Forest Zone  that spreads across much of the northern United States and up to Southwestern Ontario. Other non-native cultivars from Europe and Asia are planted, as well as horticultural cultivars and interesting hybrid species that play an important role in public education and scientific research.

Our materials are obtained in two main ways. Firstly, there is a donor program where donors make a gift to the university in the name of the arboretum. Several dozen prominently plaqued trees around campus result from this. Secondly, the  Landscape Services  continues to do most of the campus landscaping and is responsible for obtaining and planting most of the trees on campus, even though the SFA digitally maps, catalogues, and labels them.

A double row of Eastern Black Walnut trees (Juglans nigra L.) were a part of the new university campus site purchased in 1916. They were originally planted along the driveway leading up to the 150 acre Kingsmills Property (Bellevue Farm), terminating in front of the former farmhouse (near Middlesex College). A number of these Black Walnuts can be seen today in front of the building (seen above), and a plaque commemorates this spot. Two trees have also persisted near the  McIntosh Gallery , and in 2002, Netta Kingsmill Brandon donated a commemorative grove of Black Walnuts near the gallery to symbolize the avenue.

In order to maintain the natural beauty of the campus,  Col. J. B. Maclean , a member of the Board of Directors and President of the Maclean Publishing company, financed a plan to landscape the campus in the style of grand English houses, using the contours of the land and current woodlots.

The unemployment relief system during the Great Depression funded the program, where dead trees were cleared along the riverbank, and new ones were planted to prevent erosion. By 1936, 12,000 trees had been planted (10,000 of which were donated by the Forestry Department of Ontario). This period overlapped with Dr. Fox's inauguration as the university's President (from 1928 to 1947), where he oversaw the campus landscaping project.

In 1981, Dr. George Connell, the then President of Western, designated all the trees in the manicured areas of campus as The Sherwood Fox Arboretum. Dr. J. B. Phipps was appointed the first Arboretum Director.

As an inveterate botanist, Dr. Fox added numerous pressed plant specimens to Western's  Herbarium  between 1918 to 1951. These early specimens were useful in cataloguing the natural diversity of London and surrounding areas prior to anthropological impacts that began to slowly reduce species distributions and diversity. A number of these were of native orchids from this area, of which there were 13 different species collected by Dr. Fox. Now, it is hard to know how many species remain; historically, one of the best places to find native orchids was at the southeast corner of Wonderland and Oxford.

In his Reminiscences (1964), Fox stated that the abundance of Tulip Trees in southwestern Ontario helped lure him to Western. He remarked that the Tulip Tree was the first tree he learned to identify as a boy of nine in Erie, Pennsylvania. After his retirement, Dr. Fox wrote some three dozen articles about the trees of southwestern Ontario for The London Free Press. These are collected in a scrapbook in the J.J. Talman Regional Collection in the Weldon Library. The original draft manuscripts are in the archives of the Sherwood Fox Arboretum.

The original objective of the Sherwood Fox Arboretum was to grow on campus as many as possible the several thousand kinds of trees and shrubs that can survive in this climate. In 2003, Dr. Jane Bowles, the then Director of the Arboretum, signed the  International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation  that provides a common global framework for botanic garden policies, programmes and priorities in plant conservation. While respecting the original objectives of the arboretum, the new focus is on species native to southwestern Ontario.

The Arboretum provides an opportunity to view beautiful examples of rare and exotic trees which are truly worldwide in origin. As of 2021, the main arboretum contains some 3,200 trees and shrubs of 350 species. This reflects a wide geographic coverage, with all countries of the north temperate region being represented. South temperate regions seem to lack sufficiently severe climates to produce plants adapted to London's winter.

Among the more noticeable species on campus are the many conifers that constitute an essential aesthetic landscaping function, particularly because of their retention of leaves (needles) in the winter. Of the large conifers, Austrian and Scotch Pines and Norway Spruce - all exotic species - constitute the majority. A large number of yews, cedars, and junipers comprise the bulk of the shrubby conifers. Some of the less common varieties include  Ginkgo biloba , a Chinese tree surviving from the Mesozoic period and now not found in the wild; dawn redwood ( Metasequoia ) another living fossil first described from the Japanese Cretaceous period and eventually found in the wild in central China in the mid 40s, and several Douglas-Fir ( Pseudotsuga ) of the hardy Rocky Mountain inland region. Japanese red-cedar ( Thuja standishii ) is an unusual species also found in the arboretum.

"Shade trees" are more varied, but there are a number of norway maple (in several varieties), red oak ( Quercus rubra ), and some surviving white ash ( Fraxinus americana ). Once plentiful, most of our elms have sadly succumbed to  Dutch Elm Disease . Some of the Arboretum's more dramatic trees include the red horse-chestnut ( Aesculus x carnea 'Briotti' ) , Catalpa, purple beech, Kentucky coffee-tree, scarlet oak, and yellowwood. Smaller trees, often grown for their spring flowers, are dominated by the large number of flowering crabapples (Malus). One of the most interesting smaller trees is the paperbark maple ( Acer griseum ).

Southern Canada's Carolinian flora is well represented in the Arboretum. There are mature native species of hackberry (Celtis) and sycamore ( Platanus occidentalis ) and the black maple ( Acer nigrum ) with its large, floppy leaves. Also on campus are wafer ash ( Ptelea trifoliata ) - now planted, formerly native, chinquapin oak ( Quercus muehlenbergii ), chestnut (Castanea), pawpaw (Asimina), and redbud ( Cercis canadensis ) - formerly native to Pelee Island but now extinct as a native in Canada. A newer addition is the black gum,  Nyssa sylvatica , a resplendent tree in the fall with its crimson foliage.

Visitors to Western's campus may notice trees with Sherwood Fox Arboretum (SFA) plastic or metal labels, as well as metal tags with a City of London Tree Inventory ID (above right). Each SFA label has information on a tree's:

• genus, species, and authority (the person credited with the first formal use of the name)
• the taxonomic family
• the common name
• a unique SFA#, and where the tree is natively found

For more information about the Arboretum and how to contact us, please visit the Department of Biology's information page, below:

For those curious to see digitally restored and historic photos of Western from the 1910's to now, feel free to browse the curated collection of images by the  Comms Staff on their Flickr website .

Thank you for visiting the Sherwood Fox Arboretum. For more information on self-guided tours, and other interactive Dashboard databases of our on campus trees (coming soon), please explore our "Sherwood Fox Arboretum" Collection at the link below: