73 
THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF BOTANIC 
The botanic garden as an educational institution is a com- 
paratively modern development, and may be traced backward 
through a series of gradual stages to the time when man first 
began to cultivate wild plants. The first gardens were cultivated 
for useful rather than ornamental purposes, and the earliest 
Greek gardens were little more than olive orchards. The Greeks 
also developed ornamental flower gardens, and this idea was 
borrowed from them by the Romans. 
The earliest botanic garden of which we have definite record 
was established by Aristotle, in Athens, some three hundred a 
fifty years before Christ, and through the opportunities for study 
which it offered to Theophrastus, became an important factor 
in the advancement of contemporary botanical science. On the 
death of Aristotle, the garden, by the terms of his will, was be- 
queathed to Theophrastus, who improved it in many ways, the 
expense of these improvements being borne by Demetrius Pha- 
lereus, a wealthy and public spirited citizen of Athens. 
The remote ancestry of the true botanical garden is to be found 
in the earliest attempts to cultivate medicinal plants. Pliny 
began to grow medicinal herbs in the monastery gardens. This 
practice was subsequently undertaken by the early apothecaries, 
giving rise to the so-called ‘‘physick gardens,” for the growing 
of ‘‘simples.”” Such gardens were naturally utilized to forward 
the work of instruction in materia medica, in connection with the 
medical schools. 
out the sixteenth century occurred a renaissance of the 
scientific study of plants, and the early herbalists began to 
cultivate living specimens for botanical study. Thus the modern 
botanic garden may be traced from the vegetable garden and 
* Reprinted from the Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. 1, pp. 421-424, through the 
courtesy of The Macmillan Co., publishers. 
+ This paragraph does not occur in the article as originally published. 
