Together, the extensive facilities of Rutgers University and Brooklyn Botanic Garden compose a world-class resource for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, professional land managers, landscape designers, and the public.
The headquarters of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology is at Cook College, the School of Agriculture, Marine & Environmental Sciences of Rutgers University. The campus includes Helyar Woods, the Rutgers Display Gardens, and the college research farm. The Hutcheson Memorial Forest adjacent to the New Brunswick campus is one of the few virgin forest stands left in the eastern U.S. and the site of many ongoing ecological studies.
The University’s constellation of field stations fosters research and teaching initiatives covering marine, salt marsh, pineland, old-field, and forest habitats. In the field stations and laboratory facilities of the 56 faculty members of the Graduate Program of Ecology & Evolution, researchers and students are engaged in studies of plant, animal, and microbial ecology. The Chrysler Herbarium of Rutgers houses the official plant collection of the State of New Jersey and specializes in plants of this region. Approximately 120,000 sheets catalog the more than 3,000 plant species of New Jersey, detailing their distribution, variation, and historic range.
The Rutgers University libraries rank among the nation’s top research libraries and include more than 3 million volumes and a variety of electronic indexes and abstracts, as well as full-text electronic journals.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s living collections include over 7,000 taxa and over 10,000 individual specimens. The herbarium includes about 250,000 specimens of preserved plants. The collection is worldwide in scope, with major collections of plants of the greater New York area and of cultivated plants. In addition to a number of important historic collections, it contains over 1,200 type specimens. The original collection was formed by uniting the herbaria of the Brooklyn Lycaeum, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the Long Island Historical Society.
The research lab is set up for studies in anatomy, cytology, and morphology. Recently, a modern molecular lab was added, including a new DNA sequencer. Educational facilities also include classrooms and three greenhouses.
The research library has over 56,000 books and 3,700 serial titles, including current subscriptions to 355 journals. The collection encompasses the botanical and horticultural sciences, systematics, floristics, and landscape architecture and design.