Talk:Botanical garden

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 Botanical garden is within the scope of WikiProject Plants, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to plants and botany. For more information, visit the project page.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.
Botanical garden is part of WikiProject Horticulture and Gardening, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Gardening and the Horticulture. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Herbarium and library requirement

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)

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)
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)
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)
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)

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden has no library or herbarium. Gdr 22:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

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)
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)

I am under the impression that the Chelsea Physic Garden is (now?) open to the public, as they wouldn't state admission prices otherwise: [[1]]. Am I right there? It might therefore not be appropriate as an example of a closed botanic garden anyway, no matter how you define it. --JustusvV 01:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

There has long been discussion of what makes a botanic garden at Botanic Gardens Conservation International. BGCI have made attempts to define them, first in 1989 when the organisation was set up as an IUCN Secretariat, and later refined in the International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation.

[edit] deleted external links

I deleted the external links section as most of these botanical gardens have their own wikipedia-page an are listed in List_of_botanical_gardens ==External links==

[edit] Botanic or Botanical?

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)

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)

[edit] Scientific Purposes

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)