The UC Davis Arboretum was founded in 1936 to support education and research at the University of California at Davis. The Arboretum's collections are displayed in 96 acres of gardens along the old north fork of Putah Creek, and comprise 33,000 plants representing more than 2,500 species and varieties from Mediterranean climate areas throughout the world. The collections represent an enormous repository of information on plants that grow and thrive in California's Central Valley, where extreme summer heat, drying winds, heavy soils, and often poor water quality pose challenges to gardeners.

During the late 1950's and 60's, extensive taxonomic collections, most notably of oaks, acacias, and eucalypts, were established, and the Arboretum's curatorial record-keeping system was instituted. In the 1980's and 90's the Arboretum established several demonstration gardens of California native plants and drought-tolerant flowering shrubs and perennials. These continue to be developed as sites for horticultural trials of new plant selections and demonstration gardens illustrating landscape design, cultural techniques, and plants appropriate for low-water-use gardens in the arid West.