Gardens, Botanical

Abstract

A botanical garden (BG), also called botanic garden, is an institution and a piece of land marked off for the cultivation of a systematically ordered collection of living plants. It serves purposes of scientific research, conservation, display, enjoyment, and education. Gardens dedicated specifically to the study of plants go back to antiquity. Nevertheless, the emergence of the BG type as an institution is a Renaissance phenomenon closely linked to the gradual development of the science of botany into a discipline independent from medicine. First BGs as such were founded in association with medical schools of European universities in the sixteenth century. Professors of medicine and apothecaries were the proto-botanists of that time, i.e., specialists of medicinal plants. Being rooted in the humanist culture of the Renaissance demanded new forms of investigating nature and teaching knowledge on plants with the result that gardens increasingly began to serve as additional open-air studies. There species could be directly observed and compared respectively to traditional codified knowledge. A growing number of herb books, collections of plant illustrations, and the invention of the herbarium in form of a collection of dried plants accompany this development and reflect the growing range of specimens cultivated in BG. The scientific approach in ordering these living, dried, and illustrated botanical collections had great impact on the history of botany. It led to a change of interest in plants, studied no longer exclusively for their healing properties but as an independent subject matter. Europe’s colonial history bringing more and more new species to the attention of pioneering botanists is another decisive factor for this change. In the seventeenth century, the main interest shifted definitely from medicinal plants to new exotic plant imports. These came first in form of diplomatic gifts from distant empires or as trophies from the European colonies. Parts of princely gardens also displaying botanical collections had often been among the first to display such novelties. Early botanists maintained extensive networks for the exchange of plants to amplify their collections. Along with the increasing success in cultivating foreign species in European climates masses of new material entered BG via laborious collecting expeditions.