The Kenton County Cooperative Extension in Covington has been awarded a Level 2 Accreditation by The ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program and The Morton Arboretum, for achieving particular standards of professional practices deemed important for arboreta and botanic gardens. The ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program is the only global initiative to officially recognize arboreta at various levels of development, capacity, and professionalism. The Kenton County Cooperative Extension is also now recognized as an accredited arboretum in the Morton Register of Arboreta, a database of the world’s arboreta and gardens dedicated to woody plants.

This office has been here for many decades but the goal of becoming an arboretum began much more recently. In the past two years, hundreds of trees and shrubs were planted to expand our collection of native plants to Kenton County. Our site is approximately 3.5 acres and has over 100 unique woody plant species, representing to the best of our knowledge, over 90% of the native woody plants that grow in Kenton County, which is part of the outer bluegrass ecoregion. Focusing on the native woody plants provides us with an opportunity to showcase the beauty and significant features of the plants growing wild in our area. The mission of the Kenton County Cooperative Extension Arboretum is to provide a place of recreation, education, and beauty.  We believe that our site will offer greater educational opportunities for plant identification courses in the future as our collection matures. Native plants have the added benefit of being best adapted to our local environment and are likely to cope with a changing climate with increased plant physiological stresses to bring about adaptations in the future.

Achieving Arbnet Arboretum accreditation signals an intent to curate our collection and maintain it at an unwavering standard of care that signifies our resolve to display and preserve the beauty of our local natural flora for generations to come.