THE HARDY PLANTS 

 The arrangement of the Oxford Garden is always changing 



Times do change and move continually, 

 So nothing here long standeth in one stay : 

 Wherefore this lower world who can deny 

 But to be subject still to mutability. 



Bobart's Garden was divided into small beds by many paths, 

 as shown in Loggan's plan of 1675, an( ^ roughly indicated 

 in his reduced plan, reprinted on p. 7. The total length of 

 beds must have exceeded 10,000 ft. Later, the number of 

 clipped shrubs was increased and the arrangement of the beds 

 altered (cf. Williams' plan, p. 15). The chief interest of the 

 Garden lay in its medicinal herbs, and no doubt the grouping 

 of the plants followed the views of the herbalists. In these 

 early days many more species and varieties of hardy plants 

 seem to have been grown, than is the case at the present 

 day, but then there were no large trees. An early list of 

 species is preserved in the British Museum (MS. Sloane, 1038). 



Later the results of the travels of scientific botanists such 

 as Sibthorp bore fruit, and the purpose of Botanic Gardens 

 came to be considered to illustrate the floras of the different 

 regions of the world. And so, by the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century, the arrangement of the Garden had come 

 to be primarily a geographical one, and secondarily according 

 to the various kinds of plants, whether trees, perennials, or 

 annuals. 



In the thirties, Dr. Daubeny caused the beds to be re- 

 arranged so that the plants might be disposed with reference 

 to their natural affinities ; but of course the older shrubs and 

 trees necessarily remained as before, and traces of the 

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