Missouri Botanical Garden

The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million specimens, is the second largest in North America, behind that of the New York Botanical Garden. Its Peter H. Raven Library contains 85% coverage of all literature ever published on systematic botany and plant taxonomy. The Index Herbariorum code assigned to the herbarium is MO and it is used when citing housed specimens.
The land that is currently the Missouri Botanical Garden was previously the land of businessman Henry Shaw.
Founded in 1859, the Missouri Botanical Garden is one of the oldest botanical institutions in the United States and a National Historic Landmark. It is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1983, the botanical garden was added as the fourth subdistrict of the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District.
The garden is a center for botanical research and science education of international repute, as well as an oasis in the city of St. Louis, with 79 acres (32 ha) of horticultural display. It includes a 14-acre (5.7 ha) Japanese strolling garden named Seiwa-en; the Climatron geodesic dome conservatory; a children's garden, including a pioneer village; a playground; a fountain area and a water locking system, somewhat similar to the locking system at the Panama Canal; an Osage camp; and Henry Shaw's original 1850 estate home. It is adjacent to Tower Grove Park, another of Shaw's legacies.
For part of 2006, the Missouri Botanical Garden featured "Glass in the Garden", with glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly placed throughout the garden. Four pieces were purchased to remain at the gardens. In 2008 sculptures of the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle were placed throughout the garden. In 2009, the 150th anniversary of the garden was celebrated, including a floral clock display.
After 40 years of service to the garden, Dr. Peter Raven retired from his presidential post on September 1, 2010. Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson replaced him as President.
In 2024, the Tower Grove House was added to the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Records show that in 1855, four people enslaved by Shaw escaped the house and crossed the Mississippi River with help from Mary Meachum. A woman, Esther, and her three children were captured immediately after crossing. Shaw placed a bounty on Jim Kennerly, who had escaped.
Founded by Henry Shaw with the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1859, the Peter H. Raven Library general collection contains more than 160,300 items of plant taxonomic literature.
The Sturtevant Pre-Linnaean Collection includes works published between 1474 - 1753 that were donated to the Missouri Botanical Garden Library in 1892 by botanist and agronomist Edward Lewis Sturtevant. The collection contains over 1000 volumes.
The Linnaean Collection contains more than 900 volumes by Carl Linnaeus including his works, revisions of his work, and his students’ work.
The Post-1753 Rare Book Collection contains more than 3,000 books. Holdings include works by Charles Darwin, and George Engelmann.
The folio collection houses over 1,000 volumes of full-sized plant illustrations. The collection includes Banks' Florilegium.
Named after its donor, William C. Steere, the Steere Collection consists of more than 1,000 titles on bryology, as well as 2,000 pamphlets and reprints.
The Peter H. Raven Library has worked closely with the Biodiversity Heritage Library to provide digital scans of works in their collection.
The garden is a place for many annual cultural festivals, such as the Japanese Festival and the Chinese Culture Days by the St. Louis Chinese Culture Days Committee. During this time, there are showcases of the culture's botanics as well as cultural arts, crafts, music and food. The Japanese Festival features sumo wrestling, taiko drumming, koma-mawashi top spinning, and kimono fashion shows. The garden is known for its bonsai growing, which can be seen all year round but is highlighted during the multiple Asian festivals.
Major garden features include:
Douglas Trumbull, the director of the 1972 science fiction classic film Silent Running, stated that the geodesic domes on the spaceship Valley Forge were based on the Missouri Botanical Garden's Climatron dome.
Missouri Botanical Garden also operates the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Chesterfield. The Butterfly House includes an 8,000-square-foot (740 m) indoor butterfly conservatory as well as an outdoor butterfly garden.
The EarthWays Center is a group at the Missouri Botanical Garden that provides resources on and educates the public about green practices, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other sustainability matters.
The Shaw Nature Reserve was started by the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1925 as a place to store plants away from the pollution of the city. The air in St. Louis later cleared up, and the reserve has continued to be open to the public for enjoyment, research, and education ever since. The 2,400-acre (9.7 km) reserve is located in Gray Summit, Missouri, 35 miles (56 km) away from the city.
The Plant List is an Internet encyclopedia project to compile a comprehensive list of botanical nomenclature, created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Missouri Botanical Garden. The Plant List has 1,040,426 scientific plant names of species rank, of which 298,900 are accepted species names. In addition, the list has 620 plant families and 16,167 plant genera.
In September 2017 the Missouri Botanical Garden teamed up with the St. Louis Zoo and Washington University in St. Louis in a conservation effort known as the Living Earth Collaborative. The collaborative, run by Washington University scientist Jonathan Losos, seeks to promote further understanding of the ways humans can help to preserve the varied natural environments that allow plants, animals and microbes to survive and thrive.
Monsanto had donated $10 million to the Missouri Botanical Garden since the 1970s, which named its 1998 plant science facility the Monsanto Center. The center has since been renamed to the Bayer Center following Monsanto's acquisition by Bayer.