Telling the Story of Outreach: Mandy DiBella’s Work at the Arboretum
For many visitors, a walk through The Arboretum at Penn State is an opportunity to slow down, enjoy the scenery, and experience one of campus’s most beloved spaces. What they may not see, however, is the extensive work happening behind the scenes to make those experiences possible.
Mandy DiBella, curator of living collections at The Arboretum at Penn State, is one of the people helping connect the beauty visitors see with the knowledge, history, and purpose behind it. Through her work documenting plants, creating educational resources, and helping shape the Arboretum’s growing collections, DiBella plays an important role in supporting Penn State Outreach’s broader mission of connecting the University’s resources and expertise with communities.
“I think of my role as connecting information, plants, and people,” DiBella said.
A Path Rooted in Curiosity
DiBella’s journey to the Arboretum was not a straight line, but her career has consistently been rooted in a love of the natural world.
Growing up in a rural lake community in northwestern New Jersey, she spent much of her childhood exploring the forests and mountains around her. Her early interest in wildlife eventually grew into a passion for plants, conservation, and biodiversity.
As a student, DiBella shifted from pre-veterinary studies to biodiversity and conservation biology, opening the door to experiences working with endangered species in Australia and conducting marine conservation research in Belize. After graduation, she continued building a diverse career that included environmental education, wildlife rehabilitation, and graduate research focused on coastal ecosystems and diamondback terrapins in South Carolina.
Her work as a park biologist in South Carolina brought her even closer to the intersection of conservation, research, and stewardship. She contributed to projects involving sea turtle nest monitoring, shorebird surveys, habitat protection, native plant restoration, and the creation and management of a pollinator garden. Along the way, she realized she was especially drawn to the connection between plants, wildlife, data, and conservation.
That realization eventually led her into plant records and collections management, where she discovered what she describes as her niche: combining fieldwork, plant taxonomy, history, data management, and stewardship to preserve living botanical collections. When the opportunity to join The Arboretum at Penn State arose, it felt like a natural next step. She has now spent more than six years helping steward and document its living collections while supporting its missions of education, research, conservation, and public engagement.
The Story Behind Every Plant
As curator of living collections, DiBella oversees the systems and technologies that document the Arboretum’s plants. Her work includes procuring, accessioning, mapping, inventorying, and labeling plants, as well as maintaining detailed records that track their history, provenance, performance, and location. Those records help transform the Arboretum from simply a beautiful collection of gardens into a resource that can support research, conservation, and long-term planning.
But DiBella’s work is not only about maintaining information. It is also about making that information accessible.
She creates the Arboretum’s plant labels and signage in-house, maintains information in its interactive map located on the Arboretum’s website, and develops plant lists and educational content for the public. These resources allow visitors to look beyond what is immediately visible and learn more about the plants and collections around them.
In that way, DiBella is helping tell the story of Outreach through her work.
A visitor might stop to admire a plant, notice its label or QR code, and learn its name. A student or researcher may use the same carefully maintained records to better understand the collection. A family may leave inspired to plant something at home. Each of those moments begins with information being preserved, organized, and shared.
DiBella has seen those connections firsthand.
She enjoys watching visitors stop at plants that catch their attention, search for a label or locate the plant on a list, and excitedly share what they have discovered with friends or family. To her, those small moments are meaningful because they show that people are genuinely connecting with the collections.
A Community Effort with a Lasting Impact
The Arboretum is the result of much more than what visitors see on the surface. Every garden has its own purpose and narrative, with plants intentionally selected and managed to support educational goals, research, conservation, programming, and the identity of each space.
Behind those gardens is a larger community of staff, volunteers, interns, students, faculty, and donors working toward a shared mission.
DiBella’s own work is deeply connected to that community. In addition to managing plant records and collections, she collaborates with horticulture and education staff, supports research projects, provides plant material for teaching and research, and works with faculty, students, and other public gardens. She also coordinates student employees, interns, and volunteers, helping mentor and train future horticulture and public garden professionals.
One project that especially reflects this collaborative impact is the Pollinator and Bird Garden.
DiBella was involved from the beginning, helping count, document, and track the first plants as they went into the ground. The three-acre garden, containing more than 150,000 plants, became a collaborative effort involving horticulture staff, volunteers, researchers and others. Designed with pollinator researchers and avian experts, the garden supports native pollinators and birds while also serving as a place for research, teaching, and public education.
For DiBella, the garden represents what makes the Arboretum, and Outreach, so meaningful: science and education meeting people where they are.
“It’s a beautiful landscape, but it’s also grounded in science,” she said.
Looking Beyond the Landscape
DiBella hopes that people who visit the Arboretum come away seeing it differently. She wants them to recognize it as a living museum; one where the “objects” are living plants that can be enjoyed, studied, and used for purposes extending beyond the University itself.
That perspective captures the impact of her work and the larger impact of Penn State Outreach. Outreach is often about making knowledge accessible, building connections, and creating opportunities for people to learn and engage. At the Arboretum, that can happen through a class visit, a research project, a volunteer experience, or something as simple as stopping to read a plant label.
For DiBella, those connections are a reminder of why the work matters. When visitors describe the Arboretum as their favorite place on campus or as an important resource for the community, she sees the impact of the collective work happening there. She finds it especially rewarding to know that the space brings people joy, inspiration, and a sense of belonging.
Through her work, she is helping preserve more than plants. She is preserving their stories, making knowledge accessible, and creating opportunities for visitors, students, and researchers to connect with the natural world.
The next time someone walks through the Arboretum, they may simply see a beautiful garden. But behind every carefully documented plant, educational label, and growing collection is a story of stewardship, collaboration, and connection—and people like DiBella helping make that story available to the wider community.