Artboretum

Earlier this year, my father and I visited the arboretum at Palomar College. We traveled about 50 miles from south San Diego County to see it, after reading their web site and thinking we’d found a gem.

To put it bluntly, we were appalled. The arboretum appears to have been completely neglected for some years; dead and dying specimens are everywhere. Only the weeds were thriving. Labels and signs — a key part of any arboretum — were largely missing.

And in the middle of this aboretum disaster was the … thing … shown in the photo at right. It looked as beat up and defeated as the rest of the arboretum to us. A sign identified it as a work of art, and it’s a good thing there was a sign — otherwise we’d have been hard put to figure out just what it was. I know I’m displaying my primitive sense of art here, but … I can’t help but associate art with beauty. And beautiful this thing ain’t. It’s beyond me why anyone would want such a thing in the middle of what could be a beautiful arboretum.

But now I read that the “Friends of the Palomar College Arboretum” actually moved this piece of “art” into the arboretum they are in charge of. And they’re out there raising money through donations to have the original artist (a local, James Hubbel) design the surrounding display area and help with refurbishing the sculpture. They’re trying to raise $40,000 to $50,000 dollars to accomplish this. And they’re trying to bring more “art” into the arboretum.

I have a modest suggestion for the Friends of Palomar College Arboretum: figure out what your mission is, make your name reflect it, and then concentrate on that. If you really want to be the “Friends of Palomar College Home for Orphaned Outdoor 'Art'", then change your name and quit pretending to be an arboretum — put your dying specimens out of their misery and put in some gravel and silk plants. On the other hand, if you really want to be Friends of the Palomar College Arboretum", perhaps you should consider addressing the 50,000 or so things about the arboretum that should be a higher priority for you than salvaging pieces of art. Things like, say, keeping your specimen plants alive! You might even get a couple of hundred bucks together and label the four or five specimens that are still surviving!

Sheesh.

The North County Times has an article about this.