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The John J. Willaman Director of Plant Science Dr. Timothy A. Block and Jason Lubar, associate director of Urban Forestry, have retired after serving for decades at Morris Arboretum & Gardens. 

Dr. Block was hired at the Morris as a post-doctoral candidate to help write the first edition of The Plants of Pennsylvania: An Illustrated Manual, along with botanist Dr. Ann Fowler Rhoads. He is a co-founder with Rhoads of the Pennsylvania Flora Project of Morris Arboretum. He became director of botany in 2002. 

Block’s interest in plants was cultivated as a child growing up in Ohio. 

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“I didn’t know what everything was that I was looking at, but there was sort of a magic to being out in the woods and communing with nature,” he said. 

At the Morris, Block focused on floristic botany, the study and the science of how vegetation and species are distributed across landscapes and through time. He also taught field botany and other classes at the University of Pennsylvania. 

“I love teaching,” he said. “I always have. It’s the most rewarding piece of my career. I think I’ve touched a lot of people’s lives in a positive way.” 

Block said there are botanical projects he will continue to work on because he likes to do them. He’s learning more about the slender rock-brake (Crytogramma stelleri) and he’ll continue the vegetation inventory and plant community mapping of Nescopeck State Park in Luzerne County, PA. 

“I’ve been really fortunate to be able to get paid to do something that I would have happily done for free,” he said. “I'm not retiring so that I don't have to be a botanist anymore. It’s not a job. It’s what my life has become. And I wouldn't have it any other way.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Lubar’s affiliation with the Morris began when he very young. 

“I came here as a kid with my parents,” he said, “and I remember playing on the porch of the old Compton mansion.” He ended up working at the Morris every summer during college—mowing, staffing the entrance gate, feeding the swans, and taking people on tours. 

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Eventually he got a job working with former Arboricultural Consultant and Educator A. William Graham Jr. and calls him a great mentor. “He taught me everything he knew. And he was very, very patient in teaching me how to write professional reports. And he motivated me to join the ISA (International Society of Arboriculture) and then to join the American Society of Consulting Arborists, get my certification and develop my skills, and make this into a career.” Lubar assumed Graham’s role in 2006. 

“Urban forestry is becoming very important,” Lubar said. “Thirty years ago, no one really knew what it was.” Lubar likes to call himself the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character that warned of the consequences of not protecting our natural resources. “Trees provide so many benefits. They need to be considered in construction, in planting at your house. People and municipalities should be planting more trees of the right species in the right place in the right way.” 

Lubar said he’ll still be working with trees in some capacity in retirement. He reflects fondly on his many years at the Morris. 

“It’s amazing to see the evolution of the arboretum, and I’m very happy to have worked here.”