South Orange -- Gotelli Garden

This was the private garden of William T. Gotelli, a building contractor and collector of dwarf and slow-growing conifers. With design assistance from landscape architect John J. Jennings, Gotelli amassed about 1,500 specimens within a 15-year period from nurseries, estates, and botanical gardens in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Thirty genera were represented by numerous varieties of fir, cedar, false cypress (Chamaecyparis), juniper, spruce, pine, Cryptomeria, yew, arborvitae, hemlock , and other genera. Considered to be one of the most extensive collections of its type, all of the plants, rocks, sculpture, and other features were donated by Gotelli to the United States National Arboretum in 1962 and were removed to Washington, D.C., where they are known as the Gotelli Dwarf and Slow-Growing Conifer Collection. A virtual tour of the collection as it presently exists may be found on the arboretum's website.