---
title: "Botanical garden"
chunk: 3/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_garden"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:29:01.074157+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the 17th century, botanical gardens began their contribution to a deeper scientific curiosity about plants. If a botanical garden is defined by its scientific or academic connection, then the first true botanical gardens were established with the revival of learning that occurred in the European Renaissance. These were secular gardens attached to universities and medical schools, used as resources for teaching and research. The superintendents of these gardens were often professors of botany with international reputations, a factor that probably contributed to the creation of botany as an independent discipline rather than a descriptive adjunct to medicine.

==== Origins in the Italian Renaissance ====
The botanical gardens of Southern Europe were associated with university faculties of medicine and were founded in Italy at Orto botanico di Pisa (1544), Orto botanico di Padova (1545), Orto Botanico di Firenze (1545), Orto Botanico dell'Università di Pavia (1558) and Orto Botanico dell'Università di Bologna (1568). Here the physicians (known in English as apothecaries) delivered lectures on the Mediterranean "simples" or "officinals" that were being cultivated in the grounds. Student education was no doubt stimulated by the relatively recent advent of printing and the publication of the first herbals.

==== Northern Europe ====
The tradition of these Italian gardens spread across Europe, with early examples including:

Leipzig Botanical Garden, Germany (1543)
Botanical Garden of Valencia, Spain (1567)
Hortus Botanicus Leiden, Netherlands (1590)
Jardin des plantes de Montpellier, France (1593)
University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, Denmark (1600)
University of Oxford Botanic Garden, England (1621)
Jardin des Plantes, Paris (1635)
Hortus Botanicus (Amsterdam), Netherlands (1638)
Uppsala University, Sweden (1655)
Chelsea Physic Garden, England (1673)
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland (1670)

==== Beginnings of botanical science ====

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the first plants were being imported to these major Western European gardens from Eastern Europe and nearby Asia (which provided many bulbs), and these found a place in the new gardens, where they could be conveniently studied by the plant experts of the day. For example, Asian introductions were described by Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), who was director, in turn, of the Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna and Hortus Botanicus Leiden. Many plants were being collected from the Near East, especially bulbous plants from Turkey. Clusius laid the foundations of Dutch tulip breeding and the bulb industry, and he helped create one of the earliest formal botanical gardens of Europe at Leyden where his detailed planting lists have made it possible to recreate this garden near its original site. The hortus medicus of Leyden in 1601 was a perfect square divided into quarters for the four continents, but by 1720, though, it was a rambling system of beds, struggling to contain the novelties rushing in, and it became better known as the hortus academicus. His Exoticorum libri decem (1605) is an important survey of exotic plants and animals that is still consulted today.
In the mid to late 17th century, the Paris Jardin des Plantes was a centre of interest with the greatest number of new introductions to attract the public. In England, the Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 as the "Garden of the Society of Apothecaries". The Chelsea garden had heated greenhouses, and in 1723 appointed Philip Miller (1691–1771) as head gardener. He had a wide influence on both botany and horticulture, as plants poured into it from around the world. The garden's golden age came in the 18th century, when it became the world's most richly stocked botanical garden. Its seed-exchange programme was established in 1682 and still continues today.

=== 18th century ===

==== Gardens and orangeries ====

With the increase in maritime trade, ever more plants were brought back to Europe as trophies from distant lands, and these were triumphantly displayed in the private estates of the wealthy, in commercial nurseries, and in the public botanical gardens. Heated conservatories called "orangeries" became a feature of many botanical gardens.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was founded in 1759, initially as part of the Royal Garden set aside as a physic garden. William Aiton (1741–1793), the first curator, was taught by garden chronicler Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden, whose son Charles became the first curator of the original Cambridge Botanic Garden (1762). In 1759, the "Physick Garden" was planted, and by 1767, it was claimed that "the Exotick Garden is by far the richest in Europe". Gardens such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1759), the Orotava Acclimatization Garden (in Spanish) in Tenerife (1788), and the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid (1755) were set up to cultivate new species returned from expeditions to the tropics; they also helped found new tropical botanical gardens. From the 1770s, following the example of the French and Spanish, amateur collectors were supplemented by official horticultural and botanical plant hunters. These botanical gardens were boosted by the flora being sent back to Europe from various European colonies around the globe.