Botanical Garden

In early days, botanic gardens were originally a collection of living plants whose primary function was to demonstrate relationships among plant groups. In current times, the majority of botanical gardens are primarily focused on showcasing attractive plants, to the extent that this is possible, in a manner that emphasizes the natural interactions between them. As a result, the two tasks of visual appeal and taxonomic order are combined. Botanical plants that were previously prized for their medical properties and played a significant role in the development of early botanical gardens are now mostly of historical significance and are not well represented in contemporary collections. An arboretum is a type of show garden that focuses on woody plants (shrubs and trees), and it is located in a natural setting. It could be a stand-alone collection or a component of a larger botanical garden complex.

Today’s botanical gardens have the primary goal of maintaining huge collections of plants that are identified with common and scientific names and the places in which they were collected. According to the amount of land available, as well as the financial and scholarly resources available to the school, plant collections in such gardens range from a few hundred to several thousand distinct varieties.

As the world’s population becomes more urbanized, botanical gardens are becoming more widely acknowledged as vital cultural resources in industrialized countries, and as a result, more and more people are visiting them. Botanical gardens provide the city dweller with a portion of the natural environment that he no longer has access to; in addition, they provide a mental getaway from the stresses of urban life and inspire the development of new interests and hobbies that are related to the natural world.

History on Botanical Garden

A tight relationship exists between the history of botanical gardens and the history of botany itself. The botanical gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries were medicinal gardens, but the concept of a botanical garden evolved to include displays of the beautiful, strange, new, and sometimes economically important plant trophies that were being returned from European colonies and other distant lands during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As time progressed, they took on an instructional role, showing the most recent plant classification systems developed by botanists working in the linked herbaria as they attempted to arrange these new riches according to their classification systems. When it came to horticulture and botany collections, the nineteenth and twentieth century saw an increase in the number of specialty and eclectic collections that demonstrated many different facets of each. 

Gardens and arboretums differ from parks in that they are generally built up according to the scientific relationships of their plant collections, rather than purely for the purpose of creating a landscape effect, providing playing fields, or engaging in other primarily recreational activities. It is customary in botanical garden design to group trees and shrubs together in a portion of the garden referred to as an arboretum in order to create a more formal appearance. The employment of trees and shrubs to improve landscape effects is more common nowadays, and this is accomplished by interspersing them around the garden, in their respective taxonomic groups, with herbaceous collections.

The service or show greenhouses, which are typically connected with botanical gardens, are used to propagate plants or to cultivate species that may not survive the seasonal changes in their natural environment. Tropical orchids, for example, must be cultivated in a greenhouse in temperate climates with cold winters, such as those found in the United States. Similarly, tropical ferns, bromeliads, economic plants of the tropics or near-tropics, many cacti and other succulents, African violets, and begonias are hardy in their native climates. Hotbeds and greenhouses are used to start seedling plants that will be transplanted outside as soon as the weather becomes warm enough.

Goals of Botanical Garden

The following are some objectives and function of Botanical garden: 

Research in the scientific community

Botanical gardens are excellent venues for conducting a wide range of scientific study. Botanical gardens not only serve as taxonomic and systematic study centers, but they also serve as key sources of plant ecology data collecting, including phenological indications of climate change, plant physiology and growth techniques, and plant animal interactions, among many other things. In order to investigate functional trade-offs between species features and plant performance, botanical gardens can provide a large collection of species. Biological experiments at botanic gardens can be conducted on pollination ecology, seed dispersal, plant conservation genetics, and the naturalization of alien plants.

Herbarium as well as a library

A number of botanical gardens have herbaria and libraries as fundamental parts of their facilities, and they provide taxonomic materials for research and education as part of their services.

Conservation and usage are two important concepts

Botanical gardens are most known for their living plant collections, and Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) believes that there are 6.13 million accessions in botanical gardens, representing more than 80,000 species, according to their estimations. Living plant conservation in botanical gardens, particularly of species that are endangered in the wild, has a long history and has made significant contributions to our understanding of endangered species. When it comes to biological diversity, ex situ conservation is described as the preservation of components of biological diversity outside of their natural environments. It is well known that botanical gardens are related with ex situ conservation, which plays a vital role in the preservation of vulnerable plant species. In addition to establishing and supporting collections of native species, botanical gardens also aim to establish and maintain stocks of plants for ex situ conservation and sustainable exploitation of plant resources around the world.  A basic framework for integrated plant species conservation in a botanical garden also includes the identification and management of threats, long-term ex situ and/or in situ germplasm storage, research and development information management, and horticulture and living collections.

Exchange of Seeds

More than 500 botanical gardens across the world participate in an informal seed exchange programme, which provides annual lists of available species as well as the opportunity for free seed exchange.

Education

Floral collections are presented in botanical gardens according to families, species, or ecosystems. These collections of plants can be utilized for educational or demonstration purposes. The public can also learn about plant identification, including native and alien species, as well as propagation methods, in botanical gardens, which also provide plant materials for educational reasons.

Appealing on a visual level

Botanical gardens are visually appealing due to the enormous collections of native and exotic plants that are housed within them. They draw a huge number of tourists who come to observe the general plant diversity as well as exotic and unusual flora.

Example of Botanical Garden

• Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Bangalore
• Government Botanical Garden, Ooty
• TNAU Botanical Garden, Coimbatore
• Lloyd’s Botanical Garden, Darjeeling
• Botanical Garden of Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dheradun

Conclusion

The Botanic Garden serves as an institute for several types of botanical research, with a special emphasis on the flora of the surrounding region. The Botanic Garden encompasses the entire core field of taxonomy as well as several applied fields such as silviculture (the growing and maintaining of trees as a branch of forestry), horticul­ture (the art of garden maintenance), plant breeding, and many more. A Botanic Garden may serve as a teaching Center for those who are interested in tree plantation and may provide training to those who attend. Training (both theoretical and practical) is regularly offered by many government and public gardens, with a particular emphasis on bonsai plant technique, flower arrangement, the preparation and presentation of dried flowers, the establishment of a kitchen garden, and other related topics.