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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



September, 1905 



Harvard's Botanic Garden 



By Mary Caroline Crawford 



HAT increasing army of pilgrims who each 

 summer return to New England to enjoy 

 the delightful excursions for which Boston 

 offers a natural geographical center will, 

 this year especially, wish to include in their 

 itinerary a clay at the Harvard Botanic Gar- 

 den, inasmuch as 1905 marked the centenary of this noble 

 institution's conception. The occasion is full of interest, not 

 only as an anniversary, but also as an illustration of the slow 

 growth of that love for nature and gardening which has 

 now attained such imposing proportions among us. 



The beginning of the garden idea in connection with a 

 college dates back considerably more than a century. Over 



through his Consul-General at New York, " to furnish such 

 a garden with every species of seed and plants which may be 

 requested from his royal garden at his own expense," his offer 

 was respectfully declined — and for twenty years more the 

 project slumbered. 



On the first day of March, 1805, however, we find the 

 books of the Harvard Corporation recording " a plan for a 

 professorship of Botany and Entomology in the University," 

 which was communicated and read to a number of sub- 

 scribers to a fund for that purpose. At subsequent meetings 

 the proposed statutes and regulations were discussed, and on 

 March 28 these were adopted. After the induction of Pro- 

 fessor Peck into the first chair of Natural History ever 



«9r$ 



Prof. Asa Gray's House and Herbarium 



two hundred and thirty years ago, indeed, Leonard Hoar, 

 then president of Harvard, wrote as follows to the phi- 

 losopher Robert Boyle, respecting a botanic garden: "A 

 large, well-sheltered garden and orchard for students ad- 

 dicted to planting . . . are in our design for the stu- 

 dents to spend their times of recreation in them; for reading 

 or notions only are but husky provender." 



The Botanic Garden did not then become a reality, how- 

 ever. It was almost another century, in fact, before any- 

 thing more was done about the matter. In 1784 the General 

 Court of Massachusetts was asked by the Corporation of 

 Harvard College to aid in founding such a garden. But the 

 State was impoverished after the long and exhausting War 

 of Independence, and though the king of France offered, 



established in an American college, and the inaugural oration 

 in English which accompanied the ceremony, " they sat down 

 to a decent dinner in the Hall," declares the minutes. 



Dr. Peck addressed himself heartily to the task of laying 

 out the Garden. Wishing to have an acquaintance with the 

 most noted European parks in order to serve his charge to 

 the best advantage, he immediately went abroad for a tour 

 of travel and observation. By 1808, however, he was back 

 in Cambridge building a greenhouse (on the site which had 

 been purchased through the subscription and by the means of 

 a grant from the State of wild lands in Maine) , and arrang- 

 ing for his initial lectures in natural history. There were at 

 first small classes and scanty returns from the Garden. The 

 story of those pioneer years is indeed one of constant struggle. 



