The Morton Arboretum

The Morton Arboretum in Lisle was founded in nineteen twenty-two by Joy Morton, the founder of Morton Salt and the son of J. Sterling Morton, who invented Arbor Day in Nebraska in eighteen seventy-two. That family lineage, from the man who convinced a treeless state to plant trees to the son who built a seventeen-hundred-acre outdoor museum of trees, gives the Arboretum an unusual coherence of purpose.

Joy Morton planted his country estate at Lisle and opened the grounds to the public as a living collection, a research library, and an herbarium dedicated to understanding and propagating trees from across the world. Today the Arboretum holds over four thousand species and more than two hundred thousand cataloged plants. It is one of the largest tree collections open to the public in the United States.