Guided Experience at Adkins Arboretum

Explore Adkins Arboretum with historian Anthony Cohen to understand how self-liberators used the natural landscape to forge a path to freedom. Click here to learn more.

Their methods for navigating, concealing themselves, finding food, and evading capture reflect a deep connection to, and understanding of, the natural landscape. Filmed over the course of a year, this project explores Adkins Arboretum on Maryland’s Eastern Shore through the seasons and brings history alive in the landscape you see today.

The guided experience includes a five-part film series accompanied by a collection of resources that invite viewers to continue their journey of discovery at the Arboretum and beyond.

Visit rootedwisdom.org to begin.

The first three episodes of the Rooted Wisdom Podcast were recorded at Adkins Arboretum. Click here to listen or search for the podcast on all major podcast platforms.

Rooted Wisdom Walks, a self-guided audio tour and digital guide from Beech Works, reveals the people and places of the Underground Railroad, and considers how their stories continue to shape our lives today. The guide, accessible on the free Bloomberg Connects app, includes three audio-based self-guided walks at Adkins Arboretum that explore how self-liberators used their knowledge of nature to forge a path to freedom and ways we can honor this knowledge today by creating new connections to the landscape.

A school field trip lesson plan and docent-led guided walks, incorporating the same themes and stories as the Rooted Wisdom: Nature’s Role in the Underground Railroad guided experience, have been developed to provide additional layers of insight into how freedom seekers used their knowledge of the natural landscape to forge a path to freedom, and to how we can connect the landscape to history. Direct school group inquiries to Madison Palmer, Youth Program Director.

If you’re excited about what you’ve seen and wish to help us move forward with this initiative and future programming, please consider donating.

The Rooted Wisdom: Nature’s Role in the Underground Railroad Guided Experience is a Beech Works production in collaboration with The Menare Foundation, Inc. It was produced in partnership with Adkins Arboretum and is based on work assisted by a grant from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), funded by the Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASALH or the Department of the Interior.

Special thanks to the Dock Street Foundation, Mary Beth Durkin, and Hugh Panero for their generous support in promoting the Rooted Wisdom: Nature’s Role in the Underground Railroad guided experience and film.