User:Sriyakantipudi/University of California Botanical Garden

History
Development

The garden is situated on the land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people called xučyun (Huichin). In the 1870s, a few years after the founding of the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Eugene W. Hilgard, the university's first Dean of Agriculture, established a garden of plants on the land which is now Moffit Library.

The University of California Botanical Garden was initially established in 1890 near Haviland Hall on the north side of campus by E.L. Greene, the first chairman of the Department of Botany, to preserve the trees, shrubs, and plants native to the Pacific Coast. Modeled after the famous Crystal Palace in London, the garden's first formal glasshouse-style conservatory was built in 1894 by Lord and Burnham for $16,000 USD and housed palm trees and other tropical plants but was later demolished in 1924 to make space for more parking and the construction of Haviland Hall. The garden grew to house six hundred different plant species within the first two years.

In 1909, Strawberry Canyon was purchased by the university and in 1925, the garden was relocated to its current residence in Strawberry Canyon under the directorship of Thomas Harper Goodspeed, the university's Dean of Agriculture, where he stated “the eastward moving air draft from the Golden Gate … with consequent moderating influences on summer temperature and humidity, permit an association of plants, birds, and mammals not duplicated elsewhere in middle western California.” Goodspeed and J.W. Gregg, a professor in the Department of Landscape Design, are credited to have supervised the construction of the garden and its layout in Strawberry Canyon.

In 1932, James West established a rock garden in a collection now known as the "Deserts of the Americas" collection. From October 5, 1933 to May 31, 1934, over 200 young men, as a part of the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 751, built road and dam infrastructure, which aided in many of the garden's future projects. Goodspeed became the official Director of the garden in 1934 and remained the Director until 1957, where he led efforts to cultivate tobacco (Nicotiana), the Rhododendron Dell, the New World Desert collection, and the California Redwood Grove (now Stephen J. Mather Redwood Grove). Expeditions to China, the Andes, Southern Africa, Bolivia, Peru, Mesoamerica, Australia, New Zealand were conducted by Berkeley researchers and paleontologists to expand the garden's collections.

In 1976, The Friends of the Botanical Garden was established to aid with fundraising, volunteering, and public outreach in efforts to support the garden. The group was later dissolved in 1997 but an active group of 250 volunteers continue to aid in similar efforts today.

In 2015, the Garden celebrated its 125th Anniversary with the renovation of the Redwood Amphitheater located in the garden.

Recent History

After the Golden Gate Exhibition on Treasure Island closed in 1939, the Japanese exhibit was donated to the garden and relocated to Strawberry Canyon from San Francisco. For decades, two newt species, California newt (Taricha torosa) and rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa), have lived and layed eggs in the Japanese Pool, an 80-year-old pond.

In early 2023, leaks in the pond were threatening the existence of newts since newts would get lodged into the pond's cracks as water drained and attempt to get freed but eventually drown. In a statement, UC Botanical Garden Director Lewis Feldman said "[newts are] part of the diversity of nature,” and “their disappearance will probably impact on the garden in ways that we probably now can’t understand.” In summer 2023, the garden successfully raised $150,000 USD to empty the pond, seal the cracks, plug the sinkholes, and resurface the basin of the pond.

Asian Plant Collection

The UC Botanical Garden is home to the renowned Asian plant collection—a repository of some of the world's rarest and most precious flora. This botanical gem, however, was damaged by a colossal redwood tree's toppling during a powerful storm. Along with the Asian section “the top half of the garden’s only Parana pine tree, a critically endangered species from Brazil [,] a prized eucalyptus from Australia’s Queensland region and a gum-leaf cone bush from Southern Africa” were also damaged. In response, a team of experts swiftly converged on the site, located high in the hills above the UC Berkeley campus, with the urgent mission of rescuing and rehabilitating the battered plants to salvage what could be preserved. This effort was motivated by the exceptional difficulty in replacing these specimens, as many were originally sourced from the wild, making their preservation crucial.

The UC Botanical Garden's Asian collection stands as both a unique botanical resource and a site of serene beauty. It holds historic significance, with its origins dating back to the early 1900s when plants were gathered from expeditions to western China and Tibet by explorers like George Forrest and Joseph Rock. What distinguishes this garden is its comprehensive documentation of each plant's provenance, contributing to its scientific value. In addition to the Asian section, several other Bay Area botanical gardens also experienced losses from the same devastating storm, highlighting the vulnerability of these curated collections to the unpredictable forces of nature.

The arduous process of recovery involves the removal of debris to access damaged plant beds and then careful assessment and restoration work. Notably, the fate of these plants is uncertain, as they may not exhibit immediate signs of distress, and recovery is an ongoing process. Some plants are pruned for rehabilitation, while others are transported back to the garden's nursery, where cuttings are cultivated to create a new generation of the lost plants.

References