I WISH THAT when I was a college freshman, a course like the Harvard seminar called “Tree” had been part of the curriculum, because since I learned about the class last year, I’ve never looked at a tree quite the same way again.

It’s not a botany course, nor one for aspiring arborists, despite its name. A sentence from the syllabus for “Tree” hints at its core intention:

“Imagine a semester devoted to connecting two organisms,” it reads. “A person (you), and a tree (not you).”

And then it adds this: “The goal of this freshman seminar will be to initiate a personal and lifelong connection with the other, the vast and variant organisms with which we share the planet.”

The creator of the class is evolutionary biologist Ned Friedman, who since 2011 has been director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, a 281-acre world-renowned collection of woody plants founded some 150 years ago. In 2020, he created the curriculum for a new freshman seminar called “Tree,” and each fall since about a dozen students join him on the adventure it promises. He joined me to talk more about it, and about what we can each learn from making a connection to a tree (like the Japanese stewartia, S. pseudocamellia, above, with its extravagantly patterned bark).

Read along as you listen to the March 23, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

what a tree can teach us, with ned friedman

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Margaret Roach: How are you, Ned?

Ned Friedman: Oh, I’m doing very well. Sun’s shining, and the Arboretum is right in front of me.

Margaret: Seen any good trees lately [laughter]? You only have 16,000, right?

Ned: Yeah. It’s hard to narrow down, but the other day I had to do a little bit of a pilgrimage to our Chinese witch-hazels. And there was one that was just glowing gold. It was magnificent. So yes, I’m making my little steps and stops around the Arboretum.

Margaret: Well, out my window ‘Pallida,’ which is an intermediate hybrid, I think, and is in one direction. And out the other window is, I don’t know how you say it but ‘Jelena,’ which is orange-ish kind of rusty-colored one. So I have two blooming right now, too. Yes.

Ned: Yeah. They’re just something wonderful. We have one of the hybrids, I think ‘Diane’ [above], which has much redder. Yes. And that one’s having a phenomenal year.

So winter flowering is just one of these things I think is so counterintuitive to so many people. We have that wintersweet, Chimonanthus, and it was so cold this year that I thought all of the flower buds that were sitting out there shivering were going to be frozen and weren’t going to come out. And then I got a tipoff from the keeper of the living collections, Michael Dosmann. “Oh, it’s on.”

Margaret: Yay!

Ned: So I made my pilgrimage over there and of course 20 feet away,  you can close your eyes and you can just smell your way to a point source of incredibly beautiful aromas.

Margaret: So I’m a few years past freshman age [laughter], but it’s never too late for sort of the life enriching and heart-opening teachings in your seminar called “Tree,” I think, having learned about it from you when we did a Times story not long ago, a “New York Times” story. I was so grateful to learn about it, and I’ve thought a lot about it since. And I wonder if you could just tell us sort of the brief version of the premise of the class and how it works. It’s not the stereotypical course where every session is held in a lecture hall or anything exactly.

Ned: Right. And actually these freshmen or first-year seminars at Harvard—and I think many other universities and colleges have similar programs—they’re really intended to get away from that lecture classroom sort of format and have sort of a liberation from the standard pedagogical approaches. And so in a way, you can create anything you want for these. It’s a pass/fail class, it’s not for four credits; I think it’s just one credit. And you meet once a week.

And when I got to Harvard, I just thought this just sounds like such an interesting thing to explore. And the first thing I did was I actually created a course that followed Charles Darwin’s life through his writings, and I mean through his actual correspondence. And then we actually looked at his serial obsessions from earthworms to orchids to you name it. And part of what I was trying to do there was to use Darwin as an example of a life well-lived, one that follows passions, one that had a wonderful family and a close-knit network of friends and correspondents and allies. And in a way, I just let his voice speak.

And so I look at these opportunities the first semester of a freshman, a first-year student, as an opportunity to really insert some experience that allows the students to ponder in the big scheme of things, what it means to have a good life, a meaningful life, a connected life. And I had done that Darwin seminar for almost a decade. And I just thought, what if I could get some of the essence of the Arboretum and what I feel when I was just describing to you how it feels to be standing next to this gold cloud of witch-hazels in the snow. I know I feel that these connections, and I know that the Arboretum and the sort of presence of trees has changed my life. And so I thought, what if I could flip that around and create an experience for first-year students that might have a lasting effect on their sense of being connected to the natural world, and sensitive and aware and awake to it?

And my thought was that in creating connections to the other, if you can do that and you do it as a practice, you’re probably going to be a more empathic kind of a person, a more rooted kind of a person. And so that was my goal truly to do those things.

Margaret: So to start the first class, I believe you take a walk; the group takes a walk with you across sort of the Arboretum. And again, there’s like 16,000 or something woody plants there. And I think you explained to them that they’re each going to choose a tree that will be kind of their partner for this course, yes?

Ned: Exactly right. So it’s about a mile long, the Arboretum, and they Uber out and I meet them a mile from where we’re going to actually have our conversations and discussions about the readings each week. And rain or shine, we just march [laughter]. And this is, well, it’s either day one of the semester or it’s day six of the semester, depending on where the calendars fall. But I mean, they barely arrived and we just have this joyful walk. They’re getting to know each other. I’m unpacking a little of the Arboretum and [landscape architect Frederick Law] Olmsted’s design history and the collections. And we look at this thing, and then in the background, I’m telling them to look around carefully, because you’re going to come back and you’re going to wander this place without me and you’re going to have to find one of these woody plants that you’re going to actually visit with every week and journal and photograph and annotate photographs, write poetry about—however you want to take what you see and put it into some form that I can experience, too.

And you’ll do that every week. And what I think, as you may know from our previous conversations—I know you do—it’s always interesting to see how each student picks a tree. And that’s really one of the wonderful surprises for me each year.

Margaret: I remember you told me that for some, what speaks to them is maybe that there’s a shared ancestry, because you have a renowned collection of plants of Asia, for example, and some students with Asian backgrounds in their family history may have said, “Oh, wow, that’s from the same place as my grandmother or great-grandmother,” whatever, and things like that. And others look at them, the physical stature or lack of stature [laughter]—some of them are oddball shapes and some of them are giants and so lots of different attractions.

Ned: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m actually writing these days about what I call “plant ambassadorhood,” and the idea that if you have provenance on your plants, plants in our collections can be these connectors to culture, cultures around the world that you may have heritage with. And so it’s been a very interesting journey for me to see that.

And often students may pick, for example, a Native American student might pick a sugar maple because that’s a really important tree in her cultural history and continuing cultural history. Or a Korean or Korean American student might pick a tree whose seed was collected in Korea. So these become, I think, really interesting ways in which the tree isn’t just a tree, it becomes emblematic of something. And so it goes beyond just the tree.

But then you have people, like you mentioned, stature who want something intimate. They want a small tree that they can just … The scale is almost human. And then I have people who just are overwhelmed by an old dawn redwood, and they just can’t imagine something… And so it’s a very personal thing, but each team will be able to articulate why they picked that tree, which I think is wonderful.

Margaret: And then one of the other elements, and in terms of if we sort of transition to like, O.K., so I’m not a first-year student at Harvard and I’m not going to take [laughter], unfortunately—not going to come and take your seminar. But if we were translating some of the elements of it, of a sort of do-it-yourself at home kind of thing, or for that matter, in your local arboretum, wherever you are or in the park or down the street or whatever in the forest nearby, there’s also these readings. So it’s not like there’s a botany textbook and you read chapter one the first week and chapter two the second week and whatever, and have a quiz. It’s like you have this diversity of readings that further illuminate the subject, both the tree and the connection, the idea of building empathy and “the other,” knowing the other.

And I think as you said to me when we did the Times story, sort of learning to love something that can’t necessarily love you back. Yeah? [Above: a majestic dawn redwood that came from China to the Arnold as a seed in 1948 is often chosen by a seminar student.]

Ned: Exactly right. And I think that’s where reading literature, reading the first chapter, Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” about the immigrant family and chestnuts. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful sort of examination of a family over generations and just an individual tree. Or Robin Wall Kimmerer and “The Council of Pecans” in her “Braiding Sweetgrass.” And you get these opportunities to read about trees.

We also have poetry that we read about, for example, abcission in the fall, when leaves fall off. Or one of my favorite phenomena, which is marcescence, which is when deciduous woody plants don’t drop their leaves in the fall, but they hold them shivering through the winds in the snow, like beech trees and young oaks and other things.

And we also read some pretty serious science. We actually go back in time to imagine a world that didn’t have trees, and what would it have been like? And then what were the first forests like back 385 million years ago?

But interestingly, I can pair that paper and that science with some writings of Lucretius, in “On the Nature of Things.” He writes about this great race of herbaceous plants to race to the sky to be the first one there. And amazingly, that little passage from Lucretius is a perfect encapsulation of the Devonian. Obviously, he was speculating, but I think that that means that there are so many different ways that people can interact with, read about, and then engage with trees that I actually really enjoy the fact that it isn’t a science class. It has some science in it, and there’s no question that that can be a lot of fun—about the science of fall colors, why some leaves are red, why some are yellow, why there are more red-colored fall woody plants in New England than there are in Europe.

Well, we can do those things, but it’s kind of a fun thing. And then what do we do after we’ve had our discussion? We march out there and look at fall colors, [laughter] and that’s pretty great.

Margaret: Right. And so here from the ancient Roman poet, like you said, Lucretius, to contemporary literature, the syllabus—and I’ll give some of where I can find a link to either the whole piece of literature or how to get it or whatever.

Ned: Oh, please do. So after the “New York Times” piece that you so wonderfully really captured the bottled essence of the class, we have posted my syllabus on the Arboretum website and I would love anyone who wishes to engage with this material, if you want to self-assemble a group of friends in your neighborhood or town that love the woods and trees and so forth, you can do it. Or you can get together on Zoom with friends and pick a tree and meet weekly. But this is all meant to be shared with anyone in the world who’d like to engage.

Margaret: Well, that’s great that the syllabus is online. That’s great. One of the stories that you have people read is by Carson McCullers called “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.” And that kind of blew me away. I don’t know if I’d ever read it, but when I did, and I don’t know if you want to give the short version of it or what [laughter], but wow, it was like what an unexpected, and again, juxtaposed against in the syllabus, also some scientific papers and some history papers and some other kinds of literature, it was really startling, really a beautiful piece.

Ned: Yeah, that short story, which really, I mean, it’s just a very short story, I think has become something so central to sort of giving voice to the way I think about what nature can do. And it’s actually came, I was introduced to it from a session called “Should Trees Have Legal Standing?” in which we read what is a really classic piece of writing by a law professor, Christopher Stone, who was at the University of Southern California, from a case in which there was an attempt to prevent a big development in the mountains in Southern California that would’ve been, I think, a Disney operation. And the question was, who could sue on behalf of this ecosystem of these trees? And in the end, it went to the Supreme Court and the trees did not win [laughter]. But what’s interesting is Stone wrote this very powerful thing, “Should Trees Have Legal Standing?”

And he was actually a philosophy concentrator at Harvard, so he was very well and widely read. And in this piece, he references Carson McCullers, and that was my introduction. And in this short story, I immediately connected. It’s a 1950s piece of a diner in the morning, there are men in it on their way to work, having their coffee. And there’s a boy who’s a paper boy, who comes in for his coffee. And there’s sort of a vagrant man who’s in there who starts to talk to this boy. And the boy doesn’t quite know what’s going on, but he begins to tell a story of how he fell in love years ago with a woman who he married. And then eventually, after a few years, she leaves him, and he spends years trying to find her, but to no avail.

And then he realizes sort of an interesting insight, which is maybe he wasn’t ready for human love.

And that there’s a science to going about how to be able to love. And he talks about building up his practice. He says to the boy, I think at one point, “I can love anything.” And this comes back to what I think of as unreciprocated love. And he talks about, “I can love a cloud. I can love a tree. I can love a rock.”

And he really is in this process of saying, “Don’t start at the deep end with human love, but build your practice up so that you can love anything and be ready for that. ” And he turns to the natural world. And of course, this boy is taking it in, not quite sure what to make of it, but of course the essence of that story is that humans should and can become more loving, more capable of empathy, by turning to the natural world.

And I just think it’s beautiful to read that story and ponder.

Margaret: And that one I was able to find online and so forth even. It just gives me the shivers [laughter].

Ned: Me, too.

Margaret: And in the sort of opening scene, the man, I think he’s hunched over his beer [laughter], and here it is morning, in one corner of the diner. And as the boy comes in, he calls out to the boy, “I love you.”

Ned: Yeah.

Margaret: And that’s, I think, how the exchange begins. And it’s like exactly what he said: He’s learned; even a stranger. To open up our hearts like that and see what happens, right?

Ned: Right. And I think the short stories, if you can’t find it online, you can order from Amazon, or go to your local bookstore, hopefully. But I think this business of learning to love without sort of assuming you’ll be loved back is a powerful sort of way of thinking, especially in the world now, where so much of what we’re surrounded by is sort of an initial take, which is to hate, or to suspect, or to oppose, and it never lets anything in.

And I think one of the things that I think you and I connected very much on in our conversations and for “The New York Times” pieces, I want this course to be a hopeful course, a way of thinking that we all, in our own small ways, can go about a practice that will help us make the world in our own little corners collectively better and more loving, more sympathetic, empathetic, more capable of not having an initial reaction like, “You’re not like me, therefore there’s something wrong.”

Margaret: Right. Not finger-pointing at “the other,” like, “I’m good, you’re bad because you’re the other,” not that kind, which we see in everything today, it seems like.

Ned: That’s right.

Margaret: And so if I wanted to do this myself [laughter], I’ve got to go out and pick a tree.

Ned: You do.

Margaret: And that’s really, really hard. And we talked about some of the ways that the students, what influences them or whatever. And so each week then they write something about it, or draw something about it, or all of the above, take pictures of it, whatever. They sort of learn about it by interacting with it in those sort of creative ways or documenting it in those ways. [Above, a student using an increment borer to core a tree and look at the annual growth rings.]

Ned: Yeah. And this really can be, if you’re living in New York City, it can be a tree you walk by every day and may not have even given a second thought to. And all of a sudden, if you pick that tree and you say, “Every week, I’m just going to be looking at this tree for half an hour,” you’re going to be thinking about it. You’ve begun the journey. All of a sudden you’re looking at bark. Before you know it, if you pick it, depending on the season, you’re seeing buds flush as we will. And maybe you’ve never looked at what does a winter bud look like, or a dormant bud look like, on this tree next to you.

Maybe then, “Oh, I see there’s scars on this, the twigs, that must be where the leaves were attached last year.” And then the buds flush, and to me, there is nothing more beautiful than seeing leaf-out in the spring. It’s such an ephemeral kind of a thing for each tree.

And so I think there is no one way to pick a tree, and it doesn’t really matter. You create your own reasons. This is why I think it’s very empowering and important that I not sort of tell people what to do, because it doesn’t matter. It’s the journey you and a tree will have. And over weeks and weeks and weeks, that tree will become something quite different than it was in ways where you will feel, I think, a strong attachment to that tree. But one that’s grounded in what I think of as giving that tree standing, actually saying, “This is a one-to-one relationship. That tree has a life journey just as I do. It’s not just an anonymous background piece of green.”

And then anyone can do this. And I think what’s exciting is when you have a group of people that are doing it, you can actually talk to each other about it through your photographs, through, as I say, I’ve had students who’ve written poetry about their trees.

Margaret: Didn’t you have like a craft project or two? [Laughter.] [Above, students plant seeds to watch a tree be “born” as part of the “Tree” seminar.] 

Ned: Oh, absolutely. Oh, I had a student who crocheted a dawn redwood. Oh. So yeah, again, the important thing here is not to be prescriptive, but to through this course and through the syllabus and through these practices that I encourage to let everyone make it their own and to make it their own journey. And I think if you do that alone, which I think is a wonderful thing, or you do it with a partner or a spouse or with your children or with friends, there’s just no one way to do it. But part of it is you have this conversation in a sense, this back and forth with the tree. The tree is there, but now your eyes can see it and take it in, and you can do anything you want to sort of document and ponder.

Margaret: I’m just going to have to pick. It’s really going to be really, really hard because I’m in love with a number of the trees here [laughter].

Ned: Well, and I will tell you, you can pick one tree and then maybe you say, “I’m going to try that practice on another tree” at another time because I don’t know that I would be … ” I have a lot of trees I’d pick.

Margaret: Well, again, you have 16,000 woody plants there to look at [laughter].

Ned: And I might actually, if I was to ask to pick now, I might say, there’s certain trees here I have to return to all the time, every year, but maybe it would be, if I was going to say, “What would I do? ” Maybe I’d want to find a tree I’d never really noticed because …

And it’s funny, we had a wonderful talk about our expedition to Bosnia and Herzegovina this fall to collect the Bosnian spruce, which is this magnificent skinny spruce, but quite endangered. And we have the seeds and we have some of them on the ground, but all of a sudden after this talk, I walked out the door of the building and I knew there were two of them, just 150 feet from that front door, but I had never really looked at them carefully.

Margaret: Yes, I know. Isn’t it amazing?

Ned: I was just mortified, but someone had given me the portal and now I thought, what would be more fun? What could be more fun? Then maybe those are the trees I’d pick because I had been not observing them.

Margaret: Yes. Well, I’m always glad to talk to you, Ned, and always glad to think about the Arnold Arboretum. And I’ll include information about visiting, of course, and the link to our Times story together and things like that. And obviously the Arnold website, which is so full of information about so many incredible woody plants. So thank you. Thank you for making time today.

Ned: Oh, thank you, Margaret. It is always such a wonderful thing to have a conversation with you.

(All photos from Ned Friedman or the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University website.)

more from the arnold arboretum about ‘tree’

• the syllabus for the ‘Tree’ seminar
• Ned’s and my “New York Times” column together 

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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 17th year in March 2026. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the March 23, 2026 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).