Conceptual Context
Community Involvement
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Financing
History of Botanical Garden Purposes
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Then --> Botanical Gardens were used for limited purposes, spanning from housing herbal resources, to studying plants, to purely displaying ornamental varieties of species.
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"These gardens appeared in the Middle Age in convents or monasteries: they collected medicinal plants, indigenous or exotic, employed for the care of various sicknesses. In the Renaissance, they became places for the collection, cultivation and study of plants with healing properties (the first in Pisa, Italy, in 1543/44) [33]. During the eighteenth century, the period of the great explorations, BGs hosted the exotic species coming from newly discovered countries with the aim of experimenting their ornamental and economic potential." [1]
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Today --> As Climate Change becomes an increasing problem in today's society, Botanical Gardens serve new functions for environmental vitality and preservation.
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"Currently, in the context of biodiversity losses, BGs have assumed a new role as repositories for the conservation of the plant biological diversity at global level [34,35]. In addition, a fundamental mission of BGs is linking public direct experience to the perception of the importance of natural systems, greeting citizens as pleasure and relaxing sites [36] while concurrently acting as 'open-air museums'." [1]
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“Botanical gardens, those islands of serenity amid society's increasing din, were defined early on as places 'open to the public and in which the plants are labeled.' Today, the purpose of these gardens has greatly expanded to include rescuing plant biodiversity, offering serious programs of research and education to citizens of all ages and instruction for skilled botanists, creating aesthetically pleasing refuges from modern life, and maintaining storage centers both on-site and off- site for the long-term preservation of plant species against the time when they will have vanished from their usual habitats.“ [2]
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“Few botanical gardens today would fail to include in their mission statements a commitment to fighting extinction and the loss of biological diversity. Plant habitat and diversity are disappearing under an onslaught of development, agriculture overcollecting, and trade. Climate change is affecting plant survival and causing some species to disappear or try to migrate. Invasive and nonnative species often outcompete native species for habitat. The experts that botanical gardens need are becoming scarce, and university botany departments are shrinking. So too is funding by federal land management agencies.” [3]
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Community Involvement
Botanical Gardens have garnered shifting perceptions from the communities around them, usually underplaying their significance:
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“ The public perception of nature has changed through human history, more recently facing two main drivers. These are pushing in opposite directions: urbanization, that heavily reduces daily contacts with plants or animals, and science, which constantly enlarges knowledge and gives new insights on sustainable living choices to preserve nature. Still no consensus exists on how to measure the importance of natural resources, the services provided by natural ecosystems, the connections of nature-enriched environments with health and quality of lifetime [1,2,3,4]. The natural world is often perceived as a “surrounding” environment, to which most of us is not directly connected.” [1]
They have grown to be seen for their potential to reconnect communities with an access to nature and serenity that may have been lost:
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Powledge describes urban communities with having plant blindness, which is “the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs” and that “the cure for such blindness, the authors wrote, is “botanical education plant mentorship and direct experience” to make “plants become salient, meaningful, and valued.” [3]
Although they still face stereotypes that set them back from engaging the community as a whole...
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“Despite efforts to attract more visitors by adding entertainment centers and special event venues, many botanical gardens are still viewed as staid places, reflecting the conservatism of the wealthy people whose money founded them.” [4]
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“What was needed, concluded the authors of the studym was a broadening audience appeal and an engagement 'with community concerns and needs.' The result, the report saidm could be a much-needed reconnection of the public with nature.” [5]
...Community Involvement is absolutely necessary in keeping Botanical Gardens relevant, prompting Botanical Gardens around the world to adopt new strategies of maintaining social relevance in whatever ways they can:
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“Whatever botanical gardens’ future, the need for social relevance – however it is defined– will not go away.” [6]
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“Urban gardens lately received an increasing attention as repository of intrinsic values: both, for people well-being [15,16] and for the ecological services they sustain [17,18].” [1]
​Financing
The need for financing causes changes. Botanical Gardens can no longer just exist for medicinal plants, cultivation or purely ornamental reasons. Botanical Gardens have had to expand into the public realm to provide spaces of entertainment and find new ways to garner community involvement and support, on top of their existing purposes.
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"Even though the role of botanical gardens has expanded, they are faced with constant funding pressures. “ [7]
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“Botanical gardens, like many of society’s cultural centers, are hurting for money as governmental funding evaporates. Traditionally, rich people gave money to botanical gardens, a practice that garden administrators hope to continue…But philanthropy is clearly not enough.” [8]
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“Whatever botanical gardens’ future, the need for social relevance – however it is defined– will not go away. Nor will the need to raise the sums of money that are required for serious research. Some changes may be wrenching (rock music in botanical gardens may take some getting used to), but change is inevitable.” [6]
An interview of a prominent UC Berkeley Botanical Employee from 1960-1976, Roderick Wayne, describes the difficult relationship that the Garden's faced with lessening government funding:
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"When Reagan became governor, and he was cutting everything he possibly could, botanic gardens and universities were getting heavily cut. I was laughed at all the time because in my annual reports for the native area I counted every individual flower I gave out for class material. So I was producing anywhere from forty to fifty thousand flowers every year just for class material, and I got laughed at. Up at Davis especially I was laughed at: 'Who wants to be bothered with class material? That's just nothing.' Well, Reagan cut the University severely. At UC Davis their arboretum was cut to zero. But here at Berkeley we got cut only 25 percent because we had all these masses of class material. From then on, I was kind of liked." [9]
Footnotes
[1] Giovanetti, M., Giuliani, C., Boff, S., Fico, G., & Lupi, D. (2020). A botanic garden as a tool to
combine public perception of nature and life-science investigations on native/exotic plants
interactions with local pollinators. PLoS One, 15(2) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228965
[2] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." Bioscience 61.10 (2011): 743-9.
ProQuest. Web. 15 Apr. 2022. 743.
[3] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 745.
[4] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 746.
[5] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 747.
[6] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 748.
[7]Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 743.
[8] Powledge, Fred. "The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens." 744.
[9] Roderick, Wayne, and Suzanne B. Riess. California Native Plantsman : UC Berkeley Botanical
Garden, Tilden Botanic Garden : Oral History Transcript. 1991. 42-43.​