The Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine, Kansas, is an unusual facility. Located 20 miles south of Wichita, it is home to massive cypress, oaks and champion Japanese maples planted over the last 100 years by members of the Bartlett family. Each spring, some 40,000 tulips bloom.

Dr. Walter E. Bartlett had a great love of nature and in 1910 he purchased a fifteen acre dump site to build an athletic park for his son. Dr. Bartlett continued to develop the park until his death in 1937, and then that son — a professional landscape architect and horticulturist — took over.

Glenn and his wife, Margaret, forested their growing tree museum with varieties of non-indigenous trees that couldn’t be found anywhere else in Kansas, eventually developing the only mature arboretum between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

Now owned by Robin Macy, the arboretum is open only for special events, by appointment or “by accident”.

(Photo courtesy of Bartlett Arboretum)