Davidsonia

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor, Iain Taylor writes about the landscape heritage of the UBC campus and British Columbia, pointing out the importance and difficulty of managing aging trees.

John Davidson, British Columbia’s first Provincial Botanist and founder of the UBC Botanical Garden, is a seminal figure in the field of botany and natural history in this area. One of his first tasks at UBC was to create a botanical garden to accommodate plants from his botanical explorations of various regions of British Columbia - coastal marshes, Okanagan desert, Rocky Mountain alpine meadows and everything in between. That garden was part of the complex then called “Essondale”; the “mental” hospital, experimental farm and botanical garden named after Henry Esson Young. Today what's left of it is called Riverview.

UBC was a busy place in the mid-1920s. With the construction of new buildings, landscaping was soon to follow. The first gardens to evolve were the pocket gardens on the north and south sides of the main Library. These
were designed by the University’s first Landscape Architect, Frank E. Buck (on the new campus from 1926 - 1949).

Not many herbaceous perennials or shrubs from the 1920s, 1930s or even the 1940s have survived. It is the trees that were planted in those decades that now embellish the campus with history.

While strolling through the campus of the University of British Columbia, you can’t help but notice trees. Whether it is to rush past them while going to class or on your way to grab a bite at the Student Union Building, it is
difficult not to have a favourite tree (or two). There are an enormous number: old and young, native and exotic. They stand as witnesses to an ever-changing campus as well as to the effort of those who, in the past, had planted them to beautify the landscape.

It has been said that a garden in Japan is a representation of the scenery of the country, though it is essentially a Japanese representation. Although it is an interpretation of nature, it is not intended to be a realistic reproduction. The significance of this form of art is best understood by the Japanese who by tradition have inherited an appreciation and enjoyment of nature as expressed not only in the garden but also in their arts and many of their customs.

Was it possible, then, to have a successful Japanese Garden in Canada?

The February installment of Judy Newton's popular series describing what to see at the UBC Botanical Garden each month of the year.

The Editors of Davidsonia highlight some of the most interesting and important titles from the thousands of recently published papers in the plant sciences.