BOTANICAL GARDENS

There are many botanical gardens in the United States, most of which were created to provide both a natural environment for people to enjoy and a laboratory for scholars to study plant diversity. They generally contain various botanical species along with libraries, herbaria, museums, and research and educational facilities. Traditionally distinguished by their use of some kind of classification system, botanical gardens use the science of taxonomy to arrange and compare the plants and herbarium material collected by them. This practice has enabled botanical gardens to serve as acclimatization stations through which plants native to one part of the world can be established and introduced to the public in other parts of the world. Recent developments such as the emphasis on horticulture and the inclusion of greenhouses and conservatories have broadened the scientific and recreational appeal of botanical gardens across the nation.

Origins and Development

Although there are records of a botanical garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as early as 1672, the Missouri Botanical Garden, founded in 1859, was the first in the United States to follow the European model that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The founding occurred at exactly the time that the parks movement was beginning in the United States; botanical gardens were soon established in New York and Philadelphia in 1891, and in Brooklyn in 1910, in concert with the parks designed by men such as Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. Most of these new American botanical gardens combined scientific endeavors with a more civic purpose that encouraged the use and enjoyment of the gardens by the public. They also tended to have a horticultural rather than purely scientific emphasis that involved the collection and maintenance of various plants and the exchange of seeds with other botanical gardens around the world, using the global Index Seminum system. During the twentieth century, several private botanical gardens were created that did not fit into the mainstream international tradition. Such gardens often do not participate in seed exchange or other global networks, preferring to focus on educational and recreational programs with strong support from their local community.

Major Botanical Gardens

Missouri The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis has led the scientific study of plants in the United States since it was established in 1859. It was founded by Henry Shaw, a wealthy Englishman who settled in St. Louis in 1819 and subsequently decided to turn the garden he was building at his country home, Tower Grove, into a scientific one that would be bequeathed to the people of Missouri. Shaw received assistance in the development of the garden from two well-qualified friends: Sir Joseph Hooker, who was the director of the world-renowned Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in England, and Shaw's physician, Dr. George Engelmann, who was also a trained botanist. In 2004 Shaw's garden consisted of an urban garden of approximately seventy acres (thirty hectares), as well as an arboretum of about 1,500 acres (607 hectares) outside the city with various tree and shrub species, and a tropical station in Panama. Key figures who worked on the garden include directors Dr. William Trelease and Dr. George Moore, as well as landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who was also responsible for the architecture of New York's Central Park and the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard. The garden's scientific reputation is based largely on its herbarium, which houses 2.5 million specimens, and its extensive library containing 80,000 volumes. Its most famous feature, built in 1960 by Director Fritz Went, is the Climatron, one of the garden's six public greenhouses. The world's first conservatory built on the Buckminster Fuller geodesic principle, the Climatron is a suspended dome that is 175 feet (53 meters) in diameter and 80 feet (24 meters) high, with a skeleton of aluminium, Plexiglas glazing, and no internal supports. This design enables the creation of several different climates within the dome through the mechanical control of hot and cold air and humidity. The Climatron was planted with a variety of tropical species from both arid and rain-forest habitats, making it a unique and appealing tropical jungle. More recently, a large Japanese garden has been added to the diverse styles that draw both experts and novices to the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

New York Established in 1891, the New York Botanical Garden followed the scientific example of its Missouri predecessor, with its current influence often compared to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The Torrey Botanical Club, a group of wealthy men and women who shared an interest in plants, conducted an energetic public campaign that convinced the city's Department of Parks to set aside 250 acres in Bronx Park for a New York Botanical Garden alongside additional land that had been earmarked for the Bronx Zoo. While the city agreed to provide up to $500,000 for the necessary developments, it stipulated that the garden's backers must provide an additional $250,000 in private funds to demonstrate their commitment to the public the garden was intended to serve. The corporation that was set up to raise such a significant amount of money enlisted the support of some of the nation's most influential and wealthy citizens, including Cornelius Vanderbilt II, Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller. Their involvement began a tradition of active service at the gardens from civic leaders that continues today.

The original site of the New York Botanical Garden incorporated a dramatically varied landscape that included rolling fields, water features, rock outcroppings, and native trees. These natural features were gradually enhanced with an extensive network of roads and paths as well as various outdoor growing areas, a conservatory, and a museum, making it a botanical garden that served both scientific and recreational purposes. Its features now include a herbarium of over 4 million specimens, a library of 170,000 volumes, research laboratories, publishing facilities, and a greenhouse complex called the Great Conservatory that was restored in 1997. It is considered a world leader in the fields of horticulture, science, and education, and continues its original purpose of combining the scientific endeavors of botany with the provision of an appealing natural space for the citizens of New York City.

Other The Missouri and New York Botanical Gardens are among the oldest and most internationally acclaimed of the more than 100 botanical gardens listed in the United States. Several other botanical gardens that specialize in particular areas also deserve mention. The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, landscaped between 1872 and 1898 on 250 acres (101 hectares) of land just outside of Boston, concentrates on trees and shrubs with a current collection of approximately 6,200 arborescent species. The smaller Brooklyn Botanical Garden (1910) and the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco (1937) emphasize the educational purpose of their diverse collections. The Huntington Garden in San Marino, Los Angeles (1907), is famous for its unusual combination of ornamental and desert gardens, while Miami's Fairchild Tropical Garden (1935) is an important collection of tropical species. Finally, the U.S. National Arboretum, established on 415 acres (168 hectares) of land in Washington, D.C., in 1927, has an extensive collection with particular emphasis on cultivated material. These represent a small selection of the botanical gardens that have flourished in the United States throughout the twentieth century.

Attractions

While purists insist that botanical gardens should serve only scientific purposes, most of the botanical gardens in the United States have a decidedly community-oriented focus that distinguishes them from the mainstream international tradition. They each combine various degrees of scientific endeavor with a strong educational and public purpose. Since the early 2000s, it has become increasingly apparent that promoting recreational activities within botanical gardens is essential to attract the public and subsequent public funding. Various forms of passive recreation have been incorporated into the botanical garden setting, including botanical art exhibitions, tearooms or restaurants, gift shops, and musical performances. Their museums and libraries also provide a source of interest, along with the many educational programs that increasingly tend to emphasize conservation and the environmental issues facing the United States. These recreational activities are designed to complement the scientific projects engaged in at the gardens and the overriding appeal of a communal property that provides a source of natural beauty and inspiration to the people.

See also: Central Park, City Parks, National Parks, Parks Movement, State Parks, Zoos

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bramwell, D., O. Hamann, V. Heywood, and H. Synge, eds. Botanic Gardens and the World Conservation Strategy. London: Academic Press, 1987.

Houk, Walter. Botanical Gardens at the Huntington. New York: Abrams, 1996.

Hyams, Edward, and William MacQuitty. Great Botanical Gardens of the World. London: Bloomsbury Books, 1985.

Solit, Karen. The History of the United States Botanic Garden, 1816–1991. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Sales Office, 1993.

Sonderstrom, Mary. Re-creating Eden: A Natural History of Botanical Gardens. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2001.

Tanner, Ogden, and Adele Auchincloss. The New York Botanical Garden: An Illustrated Chronicle of Plants and People. New York: Walker and Company, 1991.

Glenn Moore and Jessica Freame