A scientific garden in a public space: the New York botanical garden, 1900–10

Abstract

In November 1888, The New York Herald published a list of noteworthy botanic gardens, ranking Russia's St Petersburg garden as the ‘best in Europe’, ahead of such notable Old World landscapes as the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. In sharp contrast to these European showpieces, The Herald lamented, stood a meager set of us institutions, and of these, only Shaw's Garden in St Louis deserved comparison with horticultural and scientific masterpieces. Clearly, the Editors maintained, a great new American garden was needed, and New York City, a metropolis whose population approached one million, was just the setting for a new public space adorned with imposing structures of beauty. The new ‘floral study ground’ would in turn foster the ‘softening, civilizing education of both rich and poor’ within the city, The Herald predicted.1