America's Best Urban Parks

Whether you’re a connoisseur of trees or a traveler who needs a break from museums and crowded city streets, here are some special places in American cities where you can immerse yourself in a beautiful landscape and also learn a thing or two about nature. All of these parks and gardens feature trees that are in some way rare and historic and just fun to visit—from the Morton Arboretum’s ancient and towering “Millennium Oak” to the National Arboretum’s even older but darling and diminutive bonsai pine trees.—Jill Jonnes, author of Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape