Talk:Botanical garden

message: I'd like to see a source for the claim that herbarium and library is a requirement, I've never seen that anywhere. Stan 12:07, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Where's the botanical garden that you're thinking of, without a library and a germ plasm (usually dried) collection? Not every collection of plants prettily disposed and labelled is a botanical garden. --Wetman 12:18, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My belief has always been that a labelled and organized collection of living plants is sufficient to define something as a "botanical garden", but I can't point to a formal definition that says yea or nay. The requirement for a library seems a little arbitrary - does it have to be publicly accessible? Is there a size requirement? If not, would a shelf of books in the director's office qualify? If a labelled collection of plants is not a botanical garden, then how does one distinguish it from a garden that simply exists for esthetic purposes? This is why we're supposed to have an authority to cite, instead of imagining a definition based on our general knowledge. Stan 22:23, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But I asked, "Where's the botanical garden that you're thinking of, without a library and a germ plasm (usually dried) collection?"—to which there is no response: compare Heywood et al., ed., International Directory of Botanical Gardens (5th ed. 1990). I'm not going on "my belief": Houghton Mifflin's Dictionary defines "botanical garden: "A place where a wide variety of plants are cultivated for scientific, educational, and ornamental purposes, often including a library, a herbarium, and greenhouses; an arboretum." "Often including a library" is a sop to any possible bookless self-described "botanical garden", of which we have no example. "Would a shelf of books in the director's office qualify?" No: I have more than a shelf-full myself. Is "open to the public" a prerequisite? Then Chelsea Physic Garden is not a botanical garden. "Botanical gardens perform diversified functions, e.g., the collection and cultivation of plants from all parts of the world, experimentation in plant breeding and hybridization, the maintenance of botanical libraries and herbariums, and the administration of educational programs for adults and children." By selective choices, one might say any nature center with a children's program is a "botanical garden". Would that help the Wikipedia reader   asking "What is a botanical garden"?  Unthinking populism endorses so many inflated self-identifications that ideas just collapse in the general cultural rubble. I have added "professionally-staffed" to the description, another generally recognized requirement. --Wetman 09:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So a specific example I'm familiar with (and which has supplied many WP's images) is the The Gardens at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. I don't think they have a library (haven't asked), not sure about herbarium, but they certainly experiment, educate, and ornament. The dictionary definition puts a lot of caveats in, because some place famous like the San Francisco Botanical Garden transfers its herbarium to SFSU for convenience or financial reasons, it seems unreasonable to insist that it is no longer a true botanical garden. Stan 14:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: The suggestion that the Cambridge University Botanic Garden has no library is a quibble. The library there is for staff use only, and the libraries of the University supplement it with what must be, taken together, one of the prime historical botanical libraries of Europe.  A "botanical garden" without a library is like a "college" without a library. Is a Petting zoo a zoological society? In the US particularly, gardens with seasonal themes emphasizing "hands-on" plant experiences for schoolchildren together with attractive pleasure gardens with eco-themes and hobby programs, such as Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park recently added to the external links, demonstrate the recently devalued and inflated usage of "botanic garden" in the US. This point needs to be briefly addressed, though not by me, obviously. --Wetman 10:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is looking to me like a question of "broad" vs "narrow" definition - from the dictionary definitions you can see that we're not the first to struggle with this. College in fact is a perfect illustration of the difficulties in trying to adopt a narrow definition based on specific criteria; the whole school accreditation concept comes from a desire to better define what is and is not an inflated concept of a college (there are some without libraries, for instance). In the absence of formal "accreditation" for botanical gardens, we're not really in a strong position to be passing judgement on what is and is not. Stan 14:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Herbarium and library requirement 

message: Why the variation in names (nicely illustrated by the list of links above)? Is there any real difference between the two or is it just one of those quirks of language? Lisiate 23:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The earlier term (by two years, 1656 vs. 1658, according to the OED) is botanic, but it notes that it has been "mostly superseded by botanical", except in older institutions such as the Royal Botanic Society. There is no meaningful difference between the two except that botanic used to be used as a noun to describe a botanist. Ziggurat 21:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Botanic or Botanical?

message: Why does this article limit botanical gardens to those for scientific purposes?  "Botanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily categorized and documented for scientific purposes."  There are plenty of botanical gardens that are purely for aesthetic purposes.  Are they listed and defined under some other name?  Filoli, the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Jose, many others on the California list are not for scientific purposes, yet are listed under Botanical Gardens of the United States.  If BG are only scientific, the list must be reduced to probaby about 1/4 of what it is.  Some gardens with scientific missions have them secondarily to their primary missions of aesthetic appeal, also.  A botanical garden is simply a zoo for plants, and like zoos, they have various missions, some of them are primarily educational, some are research institutes, some are beautiful exhibitions of plants.  And some are not well documented at all, much less for scientific purposes. KP Botany 19:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried to broaden the discussion and definition, since the list of botanical gardens clearly doesn't restrict itself to 'scientific' botanical gardens. As of 11 Nov 2009, more is needed on all the activities of botanical gardens, scientific and otherwise. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Scientific Purposes

message: To my knowledge, one is scientific and another not.  Which is which???--222.64.219.122 (talk) 01:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that they are synonyms, and have edited the article to say this. See also the section below headed "Rewrite/re-structure". Peter coxhead (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Call for the definitions of ''botanic garden'' and ''botanical garden'' 

message: This appears to be quite an important page, since it's linked to by many separate articles on botanic(al) gardens. I think that the previous version was rather weak in relation to the importance of the topic. I've made an attempt to rewrite/re-structure it.
* I agree that "botanic" and "botanical" are synonyms in the context of gardens. Because the oldest such gardens in most English-speaking countries appear to use the term "botanic", this perhaps conveys more prestige and more sense of being scientific, but this isn't an important distinction.
* It's clear to me that it's not possible to legislate on what is or isn't a botanical garden. On the other hand, the BGCI represents some 1,800 botanic gardens in almost 150 countries, so its agreed definition should have some force.
* I've suggested subsections to the section "Activities" based on the four given in the BGCI accepted definition. Is this sensible?
Peter coxhead (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've gone through all the articles linking to botanic garden and changed to use botanical garden. I have tried to use judgment whether to pipe to botanic garden. In particular Australian and Scottish seem more to prefer botanic, and articles on a specific garden so-named I have tried to give preference to botanic. Hope this makes sense, but it cuts down the double redirect problem. Si Trew (talk) 12:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite/re-structure 

message: By chance, well "Random Page", I found René_Louis_de_Girardin, who seems to have had quite a hand in the development of the French landscape garden. I cleared up the English a bit but it still needs more work on it, I imagine it was written by a Francophone who has quite good English but slips on prepositions and articles and stuff, just in the way that French and English rather differ that way. I just note it here because I think it may be of interest, and I am sure you can follow the links. Certainly that article needs more work; I hope I have just made it a little better.
My sincere best wishes as always Si Trew (talk) 10:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Of any interest? 

message: I'm confused. It mentions having the plants labelled by their scientific names. What exactly would you then call a garden using the common names? How is it any different? Correctron (talk) 00:25, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that labelling by their scientific names is not a requirement, although it's doubtful that any garden that would be called a "botanical garden" wouldn't use scientific names in addition to any vernacular names. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:34, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Just ran across this interesting passage in America's First Cuisines (1994, 2005) by Sophie D. Coe:
:It is sometimes said that the idea of the botanical garden came to Europe in the letters of Cortés to Charles V, in one of which he described the botanical gardens of the Aztec emperor Motecuhzoma (Cortés 1986: 196). These letters were published in Latin in 1522 and in Italian in Venice in 1524. Navagero left Venice in October 1524 and when he arrived in Spain wrote to his friend Giovanni Battista Ramusio, promising to send him all the written material he could find on the New World if Ramusio would see to tending his two gardens, one on the mainland at La Selva and the other on the island of Murano. This last, supposedly the first private botanical garden in Europe, had been planted in 1522. The earliest public botanical gardens in Europe were in Pisa and Padua, founded respectively in 1544 and 1545. If Ermolao Barbaro really founded, or even thought of founding, a private botanical garden in Padua in 1484 this of course predates any possible New World influence. The last decade of the fifteenth century saw the republication in Venice of many of the botanical works of antiquity—interest in the world of plants was part of the Renaissance ferment. The best conclusion about the origin of the botanical garden is to consider it a joint effort, with the Old World and the New cooperating to add this weapon to the armament of science.
It looks like this article sidesteps the controversy, but it would be of interest to include it or whatever the current thought on the matter is, as this text is somewhat dated. Viriditas (talk) 03:30, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins