Ida Hay (1948- ) papers, 1970-1993.

Ida Hay was born in Philadelphia in 1948 and received a B.A. in Botany from Swarthmore College in 1970. While pursuing her degree, she was a Horticultural Assistant at the Arthur Hoyt Scott Horticultural Foundation during 1967 and 1968. Hay was employed by the Arnold Arboretum from 1970 to 1993, progressing from Herbarium Assistant, to Curatorial Associate, to Staff Assistant and Manager of the Jamaica Plain Herbarium.

Although hired as an assistant in the Herbarium, she reported to Richard Howard (1917-2003), the Arboretum’s director from 1954 to 1978, and from the beginning her responsibilities were varied and far ranging. They included assisting Dr. Howard in numerous projects from the preparation of bibliographies and indices to the organization of community projects. With Nancy Page she developed and managed an Explorer Post in forestry and horticulture for the Exploring Division of the Boy Scouts of America. During the late 1970s Hay served with Michael Canoso, Sheila Connor, Gary Koller, and George Pride on the Arboretum’s Educational Committee (Jamaica Plain). She also represented the Arboretum at AABGA (American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta, now APGA American Public Gardens Association) meetings. Hay organized many Arboretum exhibits, including one on the role of arboreta and herbaria with Michael Canoso and two with volunteer Cora Warren: “Spreading Roots,” the history of plant exploration, and “The Flora of Shakespeare.”

In the Herbarium, as Manager of the Jamaica Plain collections between 1970 and 1993, Hay’s duties expanded from pulling loans and filing specimens to identifying plants and organizing collections. She oversaw the herbarium mounters and volunteers and organized and participated in adding voucher specimens to the herbarium from the living collection. In 1980, as part of a renovation of the Hunnewell building, she participated in the overall planning and organized and supervised the move of 80 herbarium cases that housed over 70,000 specimens from the first to the fourth floor in the Hunnewell Building.

In 1986 Hay was the principal investigator of an IMS (Institute of Museum Services, now IMLS, Institute of Library and Museum Services) grant that replaced the Arboretum’s original 80 metal herbarium cases with new, insect-proof ones. Working with Richard Weaver she collected plants of wild origin in eastern Asia in the Arboretum’s living collections for inclusion in the herbarium as well as for distribution, and from 1983 through 1989 assisted with the Arboretum’ s NSF (National Science Foundation) funded verification project.

For many years the Arboretum worked in conjunction with the Boston Poison Control Center answering plant-related questions. Upon Dr. Howard’s retirement she undertook the operation and supervision of this program. In 1980, with the support of then director Peter Ashton, the Arboretum began to explore the possibility of producing a guide to the living collections. Hay worked with Dr. Richard Weaver, Sheila Connor, and volunteer B. June Hutchinson (and later Stephen Spongberg) to secure a grant from the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) for that purpose. Her institutional history, one of three guidebooks eventually published with the support of NEH, Science in the Pleasure Ground: A History of the Arnold Arboretum was published by Northeastern University Press in 1995.

Hay is also the author of several articles in Arnoldia including George Barrell Emerson and the Establishment of the Arnold Arboretum and coauthor in 1979 with Stephen Spongberg of “Lardizabalaceae Hardy in Temperate North America” which was published in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum. Married to former Arboretum Plant Propagator, now Conservatory Manager of the Botanic Garden of Smith College, Robert Nicholson, after leaving the Arboretum Hay was engaged as a horticulturist at Blue Meadow Farm in Northampton, MA, and continues to lecture on horticulture and on the history of the Arnold Arboretum. Ida Hay has also published under the name of Ida Hay Burch.