File:American homes and gardens (1905) (18124651866).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar11905newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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HAT increasing army of pilgrims who each summer return to New England to enjoy the delightful excursions for which Boston offers a natural geographical center will, this year especially, wish to include in their itinerary a clay at the Harvard Botanic Gar- den, inasmuch as 1905 marked the centenary of this noble institution's conception. The occasion is full of interest, not only as an anniversary, but also as an illustration of the slow growth of that love for nature and gardening which has now attained such imposing proportions among us. The beginning of the garden idea in connection with a college dates back considerably more than a century. Over through his Consul-General at New York, " to furnish such a garden with every species of seed and plants which may be requested from his royal garden at his own expense," his offer was respectfully declined—and for twenty years more the project slumbered. On the first day of March, 1805, however, we find the books of the Harvard Corporation recording " a plan for a professorship of Botany and Entomology in the University," which was communicated and read to a number of sub- scribers to a fund for that purpose. At subsequent meetings the proposed statutes and regulations were discussed, and on March 28 these were adopted. After the induction of Pro- fessor Peck into the first chair of Natural History ever «9r$
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Prof. Asa Gray's House and Herbarium two hundred and thirty years ago, indeed, Leonard Hoar, then president of Harvard, wrote as follows to the phi- losopher Robert Boyle, respecting a botanic garden: "A large, well-sheltered garden and orchard for students ad- dicted to planting . . . are in our design for the stu- dents to spend their times of recreation in them; for reading or notions only are but husky provender." The Botanic Garden did not then become a reality, how- ever. It was almost another century, in fact, before any- thing more was done about the matter. In 1784 the General Court of Massachusetts was asked by the Corporation of Harvard College to aid in founding such a garden. But the State was impoverished after the long and exhausting War of Independence, and though the king of France offered, established in an American college, and the inaugural oration in English which accompanied the ceremony, " they sat down to a decent dinner in the Hall," declares the minutes. Dr. Peck addressed himself heartily to the task of laying out the Garden. Wishing to have an acquaintance with the most noted European parks in order to serve his charge to the best advantage, he immediately went abroad for a tour of travel and observation. By 1808, however, he was back in Cambridge building a greenhouse (on the site which had been purchased through the subscription and by the means of a grant from the State of wild lands in Maine), and arrang- ing for his initial lectures in natural history. There were at first small classes and scanty returns from the Garden. The story of those pioneer years is indeed one of constant struggle.

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