Henry and Robert Tubbs were amateur horticulturalists — knowledgeable, passionate, and well-connected enough to benefit from New York's thriving horticultural scene at the turn of the 20th century. Over the next half century, they assembled a collection of roughly 3,500 types of native and exotic plants, many rare in cultivation. They were not building a public institution; they were building a private world. The farmhouse became their family home. The grounds became their life's work. Oaks, maples, magnolias, lilacs, cherries, firs, pines — the collection grew methodically and eccentrically, the way personal collections do when the collectors are more interested in the plants than in the prestige of having them. Among the standout specimens today is a Dawn Redwood, or Metasequoia, that now stands more than 98 feet tall — a tree species once known only from fossils before living examples were discovered in China in the 1940s.

After the Tubbs brothers, the property passed through Rutgers University, which operated it as a plant and tree research facility. In 1980, it became part of the Morris County Park System, which opened it to the public. The transition from private arboretum to public park is not always graceful — some places lose their character in the process. Willowwood kept it. The 131-acre property retains the intimate, exploratory quality of a private collection: informal paths wind through open areas and woodlands, self-guided tours invite discovery rather than lecture, and the mix of wild forest and tended tree collections gives the place a layered texture you don't find in more manicured botanical gardens. The stone cottage, the farmhouse, the small outbuildings — they remain as evidence of the domestic life that shaped this landscape.

Spring at Willowwood announces itself with drifts of daffodils and tulips, then transitions into the pink bloom of Eastern redbud and the fragrant canopy of lilacs and cherry trees. Summer deepens into shade and fern and wildflower. The collection spans the usual categories — the magnolias alone number dozens of varieties — but the pleasure of the place is less taxonomic than atmospheric. You're walking through the accumulated decisions of two men who loved plants and had the land and the decades to indulge that love. The Dawn Redwood stands somewhere between specimen and monument: a single tree that represents a botanical rediscovery, planted and tended long before most visitors knew the species existed. Adjacent to Willowwood, the Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center continues the tradition of thoughtful landscape stewardship in Morris County's remarkable network of public parklands.