Who Owns Shaw's Garden In St Louis Missouri

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Timeline of the Missouri Botanical Garden

1839 | Shaw decides to sell his hardware business and retire.

1849 | Shaw had hired a prominent architect named George I. Barnett to design his country home. This two story Italian style villa was built on Shaw's property South-west of St. Louis. At the time, tall grass covered this prairie with only a few trees scattered growing mainly along streambeds. One grove of sassafras trees, however, did stand on a low hill. Just to the south of these trees, Shaw built his country home.

1857 | Shaw begins to build up the Garden's library and herbarium.

1859 | When Henry Shaw needed a building to house his library and herbarium, he commissioned George I. Barnett to design it. Shaw asked Barnett to base the design on a building at Kew Gardens. The red brick building that Barnett designed also housed Shaw's museum of natural history, and came to be called the Museum Building. In side, the ceiling was painted with a mural of natural science and the names of famous scientists.

1859 | Shaw opens the Garden to the public.

1860-1889 | The Garden began to take shape during Shaw¹s lifetime. During Shaw's lifetime, the Garden contained a formal 'par terre' garden and an observation tower.

1868-1916 | Shaw built the Main Conservatory, also called the 1868 Greenhouse. This greenhouse housed exotic plants.

1870s | Shaw builds a mausoleum, but then rejects it.

1880s | Shaw commissions a sculpture of himself for his mausoleum.

1880s | Shaw added a smaller brick greenhouse to the north of the Main Conservatory. This structure, known as the Linnean House, designed by Shaw's favorite architect George I. Barnett, housed palms, citrus and other tender plants. Shaw named this smaller greenhouse the Linnean House in honor of Karl Linneaus, the father of the science of plant classification. To honor Lineaus, Shaw placed the scientist's bust above the front door of this building, flanked by busts of two famous American scientists, Asa Gray and Thomas Nuttal. Today the Linnean House is the oldest continuously operating greenhouse west of the Mississippi and today it houses the MBG collection of camellias.

1880s | Shaw founds a School of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.

1889 | Shaw dies August 25th, 1889.

1889 | Shaw's will takes effect, establishing the Missouri Botanical Garden as a charitable trust.

1890s | In accordance with Shaw¹s will, his Town House is moved from Seventh and Locust in downtown St. Louis to the Garden grounds. It was carefully torn down and each brick and plank was labeled so that the house could be reassembled on the grounds. The building, once it was rebuilt, was used on the grounds for administration purposes, and also for some of the scientific research facilities.

1889-1890 | The Board of Trustees takes over governance of the Garden.

1909 | The extensive wing to the south of Shaw's townhouse was added in 1909 to house a library and herbarium. It now contains administrative offices.

1915 | Palm House constructed for Tropical plants. This structure was built to replace the 1868 Greenhouse which had fallen into disrepair.

1915 | Desert House constructed. Demolished 1994.

1915 | Mediterranean House constructed. Demolished in the late 1980s.

1915 | The Floral Display House is built.

1923-1926 | The Garden purchase a tract of land near Gray Summit, Missouri and moves its orchid collection to this property, known as the Missouri Botanical Garden Arboretum.

1920s | The Garden sends plant collectors to South and Central America and acquires a sub-station in Panama.

1931 | George Pring patents his widely popular water lily hybrid, Nymphaea of St. Louis. It was the first patent attributed to the Missouri Botanical Garden.

1939 | The Garden relinquishes its Tropical Station to the jurisdiction of the Panama Canal Zone.

1940 | The Arboretum (now know as the Shaw Nature Reserve) is opened to the public for the first time.

1946 | A destructive tornado strikes the Garden laying waste to outside gardens, trees, and plantings.

1959 | Construction on the Climatron begins as the old Palm House (1914) is torn down. The Climatron would be the first major construction project at the Garden in over five decades. The Climatron replaced the old Palm House which had become to signify the state of the Garden with its obsolete design and its crumbling structural integrity.

1960 | The Climatron opens to the public. It marks a clean break with the past with its radically futuristic design based upon the architectural concepts of Buckminster Fuller who first originated the concept of the geodesic dome.

1963 | The St. Louis Herb Society establishes the herb garden behind Tower Grove House.

1965 | The first official incarnation of the Garden Gate Shop opens.

1966 | The Garden returns to the Panama Canal Zone for the purpose of botanical research.

1968 | Garden Guides program created.

1972 | John S. Lehmann Building opens providing the Garden with the first new botanical research facility in over half a century.

1973 | Ground is broken on the site that would later become the Japanese Garden. Over the course of the next few years this area which for decades had assumed an Arboretum type asthetic will become radically altered in both landscaping and design. Upon completion the only earlier feature that would remain in any form would be the lake albeit in a new design unique to the Japanese Garden.

1974 | The Anne Lehmann rose Garden is established on the location of the old Economic Garden. This large rose garden contains historic cultivars, miniature roses, modern hybrid tea, floribunda and shrub roses, and test roses.

1974 | Shoenberg Fountain is constructed.

1976 | English Woodland Garden is created.

1977 | Japanese Garden is dedicated. This garden is named Seiwa-en, which means 'the garden of pure, clear harmony and peace.' Designed with great care by the late Professor Koichi Kawana to ensure authenticity, this 14-acre garden is the largest of its type in the Western hemisphere. A four-acre lake is complemented with waterfalls, streams, and water-filled basins. Dry gravel gardens are raked into beautiful, rippling patterns. Four islands rise from the lake to form symbolic images. Several Japanese bridges link shorelines; families delight in the feeding of the giant koi (Japanese carp).

1978 | The Floral Display House, built in 1915, is destroyed by fire.

1979 | The Gladney Rose Garden dedicated; formally know as the Linnean Rose Garden. Shaped in a giant wheel, this garden displays hundreds of hybrid tea and floribunda roses. Many varieties of climbing roses are featured on the formal fence and arbors enclosing the Gladney Rose Garden. Peak display lasts from early summer through autumn.

1982 | Ridgway Center opens as the new entrance to the Garden. It also provides the Garden with office space for its growing Education Department, a new Garden Gate Shop, Garden Restaurant, auditorium, and floral display area.

1983 | Zoo-Museum District is created within St. Louis, with the Missouri Botanical Garden as a participating member.

1983 | This garden, designed for the visually impaired, features Braille and raised-letter labels, and is a delightful experience for all. The garden also features scented and texturally enticing flowers, herbs, spices, and raised beds for visitors in wheelchairs. The Bell Tree Sculpture and Shell Fountain delight the ears of visitors and provide great entertainment for the young and young-at-heart. Peak season of bloom is summer.

1984 | Hundreds of flowers in all the colors of the rainbow decorate this delightful garden. Dozens of wild species complement hundreds of cultivars in brick-lined beds bisected by turf paths. Peak flower season is May.

1984 | Dwarf conifers, in growth habit resembling the vegetation found at treeline, are interplanted with colorful companion plants and flowers of the Heckman Rock Garden.

1986 | First plantings established for the Kaeser Maze. This maze recreates one constructed by Shaw in the 1800s. Visitors wind through a labyinth of yew hedges bordered with arborvitae. Yews alternate with paths leading to a vine-clad gazebo. The hedges stand at 5.5 feet, but the maze is sunk 2.5 feet, so outsiders can watch the journey of the intrepid.

1986 | In the spring, tens of thousands of tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, crocus, grape hyacinths, and minor bulbs burst into flower. In conjunction with the Heckman Bulb Garden these gardens feature summer and fall-flowering bulbous plants such as autumn crocus, lilies, cannas, caladiums, dahlias, and many more. Peak season of bloom is from early spring through autumn.

1988 | Adjacent to Shaw's original stone wall, this garden provides a link between the Goodman Iris Garden and the historic district of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Daylilies are hardy and tolerate the summer heat very well. They display a wide range of colors and flower prolifically. Hydrangeas and ornamental grasses accent the massive drifts of daylilies, traversed by grass paths. Peak season of flower is June and July.

1989 | Shoenberg Temperate House opens. This spacious conservatory displays plants unique to the temperate regions of the world. Many of these regions are characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters. This greenhouse includes specimens from Africa, Australia, Japan, Korea, China, South America, the Mediterranean Sea basin, coastal California and the southeastern United States.

1990 | In the spring, tens of thousands of tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, crocus, grape hyacinths, and minor bulbs burst into flower. In conjunction with the Samuel (Jacobs) Bulb Garden these gardens feature summer and fall-flowering bulbous plants such as autumn crocus, lilies, cannas, caladiums, dahlias, and many more. Peak season of bloom is from early spring through autumn.

1991 | William T. Kemper Center for Home Gardening opens. The Center is the largest non-profit gardening information center of its kind in the nation. It provides recreation, education and resources for Midwestern home gardeners.

1994 | In March 1994 the Garden planted eight new adult magnolia trees along a new walkway leading from the Linnean House to the Climatron. The Keifer Magnolia Grove was made possible by a gift from Mrs. Elmer G. Kiefer in memory of her husband.

1995 | Designed in the traditional colors of black, white and gray, the intricate artistry and exquisite detail of the Nanjing Friendship Garden pavilion, the focal point of the garden, creates a subtle elegance in the landscape.

1996 | The Ruth Palmer Blanke Boxwood Garden is designed to display the Missouri Botanical Garden's outstanding collection of boxwood, which is notoriously difficult to grow in the Midwest.

1996 | This observatory is modeled on one that was constructed by Henry Shaw in Tower Grove Park. During Shaw's time there existed an observatory and maze in the park, our Victorian area within the Garden recreates this design concept so that visitors today can experience this attraction from years past.

1997 | This Victorian garden is a majestic example of the height of fashion in England at the time Shaw was planting his gardens in St. Louis. The style of landscaping was introduced in the early 1800s when new varieties of flowers were coming into England from different parts of the world. Elaborate and colorful combinations of flowers, foliage, and succulents were combined in "plant tapestries," the combination referred to as 'carpet bedding.'

1998 | Monsanto Research Center opens.

2000 | The Strassenfest German Garden incorporates some of the native flora of Germany and central Europe, as well as plants hybridized or discovered by native Germans. The design is that of a woodland setting full of herbaceous perennials and biennials, as well as deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs. Included are sweeps of grasses, astilbes, ferns, columbine, yarrow and many other plants. Annuals are placed in broad areas to add color, including impatiens and geraniums, which are widely used in Germany.

2006 | The Children's Garden occupies nearly two acres west of the Climatron dome conservatory. Interactive themes of adventure, discovery and frontier settlement bring 19th century history and botany to life with appeal to both kids and adults. The Children's Garden is first and foremost about family fun while completely integrated into the Garden's educational programs.

2006 | The Ottoman Empire was among the largest in history. It was a Turkish state, which at the height of its power in the 16th and 17th centuries spanned three continents and controlled much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The Missouri Botanical Garden's designers tried to recreate sights and smells common to the people and officials of this historic empire.