Right Outside the Classroom Door: arboretum at E.L. Haynes
How a Title I Charter School in Washington, D.C. Uses Plantsoon to Bring Plant Education to 1,100 Students
"This was my dream project for years — to bring accessible and equitable plant education right outside classroom doors."
A Dream Years in the Making
Sam Nelson, founder of Tree Stories had a vision for years: a school arboretum designed not for weekend visitors or researchers, but for students and teachers. The goal was to bring accessible, equitable plant education right outside the classroom door — and to prove that a Title I school could lead the way.
Nelson, a former teacher turned educational arborist, found the right home at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, a PreK–12 school on Kansas Avenue in northwest Washington, D.C., serving over 1,100 students with increased focus on STEAM+ learning inside and outside the classroom. The school — and the arboretum — are named after Dr. Euphemia Haynes, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics.
160 Trees, One Campus
E.L. Haynes Arboretum is Washington, D.C.'s fifth accredited arboretum and the only one at a PreK–12 or Title I school in the region. Accredited at Level I by ArbNet, its 160 trees span more than 50 species: native shade trees, fruiting pawpaws and serviceberries, and flowering cherry varieties that celebrate the capital's cultural heritage.
Every tree has a bilingual plant label and a QR code linking to lesson content and digital maps. The arboretum is also designed for student stewardship — students will be able to contribute their own observations, photographs, and data to the arboretum's records in the future.
Streamlining a Living Collection with Plantsoon
Managing 160 trees across more than 50 species — with bilingual signs, QR codes, and student-facing content — is a significant undertaking for a one-person business . Sam credits Plantsoon with streamlining the process, making it possible to catalog, label, and share the arboretum's entire collection without a dedicated team.
“Originally, I had planned to use a grab bag of digital tools and vendors to put a unique project together,” said Nelson, “but I learned that Plantsoon had a lot of what I needed in one place and ultimately saved the school and me significant time and money -- especially for signage with direct links to online maps and records.”
Through Plantsoon, every tree in Euphemia's Arboretum has its own Flora record. The digital map lets students, teachers, and community members explore the collection of 162 mapped trees from anywhere — on a phone, a tablet, or a classroom screen.
Most importantly, Nelson notes the arboretum has added an educational layer of interactivity for students. While maps and records are helpful, it is the environmental print on campus that has having the biggest impact.
“Every day, students walk by the trees and signs, and their eyes wander, and now they’re reading the names of the plants living on campus with them even outside of direct lessons,” said Nelson. “They take all that into the classroom with them, like a kid who told his teacher he noticed the pawpaw tree had stopped flowering and wondered why. That might seem small but that’s a 2nd grader applying new vocabulary to a meaningful line of inquiry, and it’s kind of incredible. It’s those small things that excite me most. And this is just the start.”
