It is nothing short of astonishing that 31 Newport landscapes can be found on the Morton Register of Arboreta.  All listed properties on the register have been accredited by the international accrediting body, ArbNet.

From schools, private estates and modest homes, to a cemetery and an island with a historic lighthouse, Newport's arboreta come in all shapes and sizes, and are found across the city.

Newport was the first city in the United States to strategically utilize landscape accreditation as a community-wide civic conservation strategy — rapidly increasing engagement while creating a shared framework that encourages creativity, partnership, and pride of place.

The city's first arboretum, The Newport Arboretum, is New England's first citywide arboretum.  

Newport's  citywide arboretum was the foundation of a new core conservation model: an expanded public and private property arboretum accreditation program.  This program welcomes individual properties of any kind (requirement: 25 woody species and the willingness to incorporate a public element such as an annual tour).  The program began over two summers, with the accreditation process managed by a college intern with a whiteboard and a smartphone. A dozen properties were accredited during each of the first two summers.  No social media was used; participants learned of the program by word-of-mouth.  

More than half the families who participated in the accreditation program were brand new to the organization. Over those first two years, the conservancy's private donations more than doubled (from ~$80,000 to ~$180,000), and the small group of highly engaged property owners contributed a third of these private donations. This expanded and diversified the existing funding base, allowing the conservancy to establish a heritage tree program at the local high school and hire a full time Director.  

Newport's tree conservancy, public forestry & parks department, land trust, local accredited arboreta, schools, private and state universities... all work in concert to promote conservation, revitalize a historic tree canopy, and cultivate the next generation of conservationists.

Students at a local private university can be found studying pressed herbarium specimens, learning how to identify the tree species on their campus and in their city. This rich herbarium collection was established by students from the local public high school working under the instruction of horticulturists from the Newport Tree Conservancy. And the specimens were collected from accredited arboreta properties across the city. 

Students at the high school also participate in heritage tree propagation with the tree conservancy.  Many of Newport's public park and street trees have been grown from seed (to create genetically unique specimen trees of local ecotypes), or from existing heritage trees through the process of grafting (see photo below).