Haverford College was founded in 1833 by a group of Quakers who promptly hired the English gardener William Carvill to design a landscape and transform the tilled fields and farm pastures into a "Great Lawn" around the school building. Drawing from the informal English landscape tradition, Carvill created open views with groups of trees in circles and allées, and a serpentine walk of shrubbery as well as garden plots for students to experience nature firsthand. Carvill's existing landscape drawing confirms Haverford as the oldest planned college landscape in the country, according to historian Thomas Schlereth of Notre Dame University.
Today, the 216-acre college is surrounded by the older established suburbs of Philadelphia, but the arboretum's commitment to campus beautification and preservation, as well as education, continues. It is open every day of the year to the public without charge. The center campus of labeled trees is surrounded by woods, a 2.2-mile nature trail, duck pond, and an 18-acre Pinetum started in 1929 by college faculty and alums concerned with preserving Haverford's natural setting and historic trees.