MapleFest

Familiarize yourself with the Arb over a stack of hotcakes

By: Ian Knoll

Confession time: I’m not a big fan of pancakes (devastating, I know). Call it my mother’s insistence that they're dinner food, but whatever the case, an event like MapleFest— the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum’s yearly pancake breakfast and fundraising drive— seems like it’d be decidedly not my thing. Nevertheless, heading out to the Arboretum has been the highlight of my week. 

Part of that enjoyment is probably because the event doesn’t focus exclusively on pancakes. Instead, MapleFest provides a variety of ways to appreciate syrup, be it a demo of how to tap maple trees, a self-guided sugar maple identification test (which I aced), or a presentation on how the Arboretum makes their fantastic syrup (boiling. Lots and lots of boiling). For me though, nothing was quite as satisfying as walking the trails behind the Maple Syrup House. After such a long winter, there’s just a simple pleasure in being able to take my coat off, walk through the trees, and listen to birds chirp for the first time in months. It also helps that I got to see the weaving network of tubing connecting the tapped maple trees, collecting sap in the strangest feat of modern engineering.

Besides MapleFest, most of the Arboretum was still open, which left the remainder of the afternoon as a great chance to peek at the rest of the space. While most of the gardens (be it the Rose, Iris, or Perennial varieties) aren’t exactly in their prime during the winter thaw, the sheer breadth of the Arboretum means there’s always something to see. The precise landscaping of the Japanese Garden is still impressive when the shrubs are shriveled and brown, and the numerous sculptures are eye-catching regardless of season. A personal highlight for later is the “YouBetcha” sculpture, a Seuss-esque house made entirely out of willow branches that serves as a reminder of the life cycle of nature through its impermeant design. One afternoon was far from enough to see everything the Arboretum offers, but MapleFest served as a great excuse to start exploring. Oh, and the pancakes weren’t half bad either.