The John Bartram Arboretum is contained within the 100+ acre property of Kendal at Oberlin, a continuing care retirement community in northern Ohio with about 350 residents. It is adjacent to Oberlin College and Conservatory in the historic town of Oberlin, Ohio. Since our community was developed in the early 1990s, we have planted and catalogued over 1,100 trees.

The John Bartram Arboretum at Kendal at Oberlin was founded 2015 with a mission to pursue responsible stewardship of this land to ensure a healthy, diverse woody plant ecosystem that is well matched to our USDA Zone 6a remediated wet farm field site. In many ways, our decision to steward this land as an arboretum is aspirational in nature. Our collection is insufficiently diverse — our 1,100+ trees represent only 55 distinct species — and many individual specimens are showing signs of stress and failure to thrive. Our vision is to make the John Bartram Arboretum a showcase of sustainable arboriculture, engaging our fellow residents and the Oberlin community at large in the process. We realize this is a long-term project that will benefit many future generations who will follow in our footsteps.