Missouri Botanical 
Garden Bulletin 
Vol. VI St. Louis, Mo., December, 1918 No. 10 
SOME EARLY HISTORY OF THE GARDEN 
In looking up data regarding some of the collections in 
the herbarium, some interesting facts concerning the early 
history of the Garden were discovered, of which it seems 
worth while making a permanent record. 
Mr. Shaw was an omnivorous reader and spent a great 
deal of time hunting for information about the plants grow- 
ing in the Garden. Much of this is in siatiared notes, and 
these notes were later gathered together in two manuscripts, 
one called ‘Guide to the Missouri Botanical Gardens” and 
the other ‘“‘A guide to the trees and shrubs in the arboretum 
of the Missouri Botanical Gardens.” The latter paper was 
unfinished. In it a short description of the land now oc- 
cupied by the Garden is given as follows: 
“When the writer first visited these grounds in 1820, they were 
called ‘La Prairie de la Barriére & Denoyer’ from Louis Denoyer 
who formerly lived at, and kept, the gate of the fence (barriére), 
_ by which the commons of the old village of St. Louis were sur- 
rounded. For a distance of nearly two miles from where Tower 
Grove Park is now laid out to Taylorwich Station, or rather the 
pond still existing there [1875], no trees were growing except two 
or three venerable cottonwoods (Populus canadensis) in the low 
ground, on the watercourse running to Rock Spring and thence 
to Chouteau’s Millpond; on this small watercourse were a few 
plants of the Nymphea odorata Ait., sweet-scented water lily, and 
a clump of hazel bushes on the rising ground, where the grove at 
the Garden now exists, The prairie was grown over with a tall 
natural grass, Andropogon, prairie grass, with an occasional patch 
of the wild strawberry (Fragaria Virginiana), of which neither 
a tuft of the grass nor a plant of the strawberry can now be found. 
There were no residences in sight nor any to be seen on the narrow 
road passing Rock Spring to St. Louis till coming to the stone 
dwelling of Mr. John B. C. Lucas, on the street now called 7th 
Street, and the house and garden of Mr. Joseph Charles Sen, now 
5th and Market Streets, where he was the first to cultivate the 
grape vine (Isabella) at St. Louis, and a zealous planter and pro- 
tector of shade trees.” 
In the “Guide to the Missouri Botanical Gardens” a fuller 
history of this land is given. Mr. Shaw acquired the prop- 
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