Birmingham Botanical Gardens & Glasshouses, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

A committee of local business and professional men under the presidency of the Earl of Dartmouth formed the Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society in 1829 with the intention of establishing a botanical garden. Local residents were invited to become shareholders, and over 600 £5 shares were purchased. An experienced local gardener, Mr Lunn, selected 'Holly Bank', an 18 acre (roughly 7.5 hectare) farm on Lord Calthorpe's Edgbaston estate as a suitable site, and David Cameron (around 1787-1848) , a contributor to The Gardeners' Magazine, was appointed as curator. John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843), the magazine's proprietor and well-known garden designer, who had supplied Cameron with a reference, was then approached by the committee to furnish a plan for the garden. Their brief was to combine a scientific with an ornamental garden and arboretum, which was also to have some of the characteristics of a nursery and market garden from which superfluous plants, fruits and culinary vegetables might be sold to lessen the garden's running expenses. In the event the committee rejected as too expensive Loudon's ideas for the garden's main conservatory, turning instead to a design submitted by a local manufacturer. The garden opened in 1832, although substantial development and planting continued throughout the decade. By 1844 it was clear that expenditure had and was exceeding expectations, and the southern third of the garden, comprising part of the botanic garden and the whole of the reserve ground, orchard and vegetable garden was given up. Since then there have been no substantial changes to the original layout. The land given up in 1844 was laid out as the Westbourne Road Leisure Gardens (see description of this site elsewhere in the Register).

The garden did much to disseminate Loudon's ideas of gardenesque layouts and plantings in the Birmingham area, while the annual exhibitions for exotics, fruits and flowers held between 1833 and 1927 considerably fostered local horticultural expertise. In 1910, in an effort to increase membership of the Society, a zoological collection was started, with bears, monkeys, seals and alligators. Collections of birds remained a feature of the garden in the later 1990s although the keeping of mammals had been abandoned earlier in the century.

A £1.8 million refurbishment programme of the 1980s which continued in the 1990s saw the restoration of the glasshouses and other structures and the construction of several new buildings and individual gardens.