Cambridge University Botanic Garden

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden is a beautiful botanical garden in Cambridge, England, linked to the university's Department of Plant Sciences. It sits between Trumpington Road, Bateman Street, and Hills Road. This garden covers 16 hectares (40 acres) of flat, lovely land.

Inside the garden grow more than 8,000 kinds of plants from all around the world. This helps teachers and researchers learn more about plants. The garden was started in 1831 by Professor John Stevens Henslow, who taught Charles Darwin, and it opened for everyone to visit in 1846.

One very hot day, the garden recorded the second-highest temperature ever in the UK, 38.7 °C (101.7 °F), on 25 July 2019. It held this record until a hotter day came later.

History

After many tries in the 1600s and early 1700s, Cambridge finally created a Botanic Garden between 1760 and 1763. It wasn’t on the same place as the garden today, but in the middle of town. Dr. Richard Walker, a teacher at Trinity College, bought the land and gave it to the university for a Botanic Garden. For some time, it was called the Walkerian Botanic Garden.

Later, in 1831, the university bought a bigger piece of land south of town. In 1846, the first tree was planted there. The garden grew to include many special trees, a lake, and glasshouses. By the 1870s, the garden was ready to help with new teaching and research in botany. In 2019, a very hot day saw a new temperature record set in the garden.

Research

The University of Cambridge has had a special chair for the study of plants since 1724. Over the years, many important scientists have held this position.

In 1921, the university began having a special director for the garden. The garden has had many directors, each helping to grow and care for it.

A new research building called the Sainsbury Laboratory was built on the garden grounds. It opened in 2011 and helps scientists learn more about how plants grow and develop. This laboratory works with many different areas of science to understand plants better.

Curators and directors of the botanic garden

The botanic garden has had many leaders over the years. Here are some of the people who have helped take care of the garden:

• Charles Miller (1763-1770)
• James Donn (1794-1813)
• Arthur Biggs (1813-1845)
• Andrew Murray (1845-1850)
• James Stratton (1851-1864)
• William Mudd (1864-1879)
• Richard Irwin Lynch (1879-1919)
• Humphrey Gilbert-Carter (1921-1950) - title changed to Director
• John Scott Lennox Gilmour (1951-1973)
• Stuart Max Walters (1973-1984)
• Christopher Donald Pigott (1984-95)
• Beverley Glover (2013-present)

Garden features

The Cambridge University Botanic Garden has many special areas to explore. It includes a dry garden that shows how plants can grow with less water, a fen display, and beautiful glasshouses with thousands of plant species from around the world. These glasshouses feature plants from places like South Africa, Australia, tropical rainforests, and arid lands, as well as carnivorous plants and ferns.

The garden also has herbaceous borders, research plots, a lake, and many themed collections such as alpine plants in rock gardens, scented plants, and trees. There is a woodland garden with spring bulbs and a winter garden open from December to April.

• Autumn colour garden
• Bed of British native plants
• Dry garden — demonstrates planting requiring reduced watering
• Fen display
• Genetics garden
• Glasshouses, containing about 3,000 species, have been restored and almost entirely replanted to display global plant diversity, and comprise:
  • Continents Apart, comparing and contrasting the fire dependent, floristically rich plant communities of South Africa and SW Australia, once conjoined in the supercontinent Gondwana
  • Oceanic Islands, exploring the floral diversity peculiar to island archipelagos
  • Mountains, exploring how plants survive life in a cold climate
  • Tropical Rainforests, a hotbed of competition
  • Carnivores, displaying the diversity of traps in carnivorous plants
  • Arid Lands, displaying drought tolerant plants from continental Africa and the Americas, including many succulent and cactus species, and demonstrating the phenomenon of convergent evolution.
  • Life Before Flowers, full of ferns and filmy ferns.
• Herbaceous borders
• Garden Research Plots for various projects or growing single genera
• Lake

National plant collections of:

• • Alchemilla
  • Bergenia
  • European Fritillaria
  • Lonicera
  • Ribes
  • Ruscus
  • Saxifraga
  • Species Tulips
  • Hardy Geraniums
• Important scientific and research collections of:
  • Lavender
• Rock gardens — for alpine plants
  • Limestone rock garden
  • Sandstone rock garden
• Scented garden
• Systematic beds — 144 island beds representing 80 families of flowering plants
• Tree collection
• Water garden
• Winter garden (December to April)
• Woodland garden — containing spring bulbs

Cory Lodge and Lawn

Cory Lodge was built between 1924 and 1925 using money donated by Reginald Cory, a former student of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was first used as a home for the garden’s director. Next to Cory Lodge grows a special tree called Catalpa speciosa with white flowers, and on the house’s north wall is a trained Ginkgo biloba tree.