THE OXFORD BOTANIC GARDEN 



INTRODUCTION 



Now was there made, fast by the tower's wall, 

 A garden faire. The King*s Quair. 



THE Oxford Botanic Garden is the oldest in Great Britain. 



The earliest Botanic Garden in England was that of the 

 celebrated herbalist, John Gerarde, who published a catalogue 

 of plants growing in the garden of his house in Holborn at the 

 end of the sixteenth century. 



The establishment of a Garden at Oxford may have been 

 suggested by one at South Lambeth which had been recently 

 formed for the cultivation of exotic plants by John Tradescant,* 

 gardener to King Charles I., and was doubtless stimulated 

 partly by the example of foreign towns,t and partly by a lively 

 interest in the pursuit of botanical knowledge which found 

 expression in the periodical " herbarizings " of the "Socii 

 itinerantes," as the members of the Society of Apothecaries 

 were then called. 



Henry Lord Danvers, Baron of Dauntsey in the county of 

 Wilts, and Earl of Danby in Yorkshire, a gentleman commoner 

 of the House, who, " being minded to become a benefactor to 



* Rather more than a century later Tradescant's Garden had fallen 

 into total neglect, and was quite covered with weeds, and of the exotic 

 plants only a few survived, including two large Arbutus trees and a fine 

 Rhamnus catharticus (William Watson, 1749). 



f The dates of the establishment of some Botanic Gardens in Europe 

 indicate the rate and line of march of the science : 



1309. Salerno. Medical Garden of Mathaeus Sylvaticus. 



J 333- Venice. Medical Garden. 



1533. Padua. The first Botanic Garden. 



1544. Pisa. Founded by Cosmo de Medici. 1577. Leyden. 



Montpellier, Breslau, and Heidelberg before 1600. 

 1597. Paris. Established to vary the bouquets worn at Court, but 



known after 1635 as \hejardin des Plantes. 

 1621. Oxford. 1680. Edinburgh. 



1677. Chelsea. 1760. Kew. 



