• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.49-59
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• 2019

This paper examines the background and content of Thomas Jefferson's botanical garden plan for the University of Virginia. When Jefferson promoted the establishment of a botanical garden, European botanical gardens were evolving from physic gardens, and American botanical gardens were in their infancy. Accordingly, this paper compares the Botanical Garden Plan for the University of Virginia with contemporary botanical gardens. This is examined by outlining the trends of botanical gardens in Europe and the United States around the nineteenth century, analyzing their function and spatial structure. Also, Jefferson's perspective on botany, his plan, and botanical gardens are reviewed. This study found that Jefferson's project had its background in the social recognition of the importance of botany as a practical science, advancing the national economy, which was a prominent goal in late eighteenth-century Europe, and in developing networks of exchanging plants and information concerning botany and botanical gardens. Based on the botanist Correia's opinion on the role of a public botanical garden, the Botanical Garden Plan for the University of Virginia was developed by Jefferson as an action plan, including its site creation, space organization, and supplying of plants. Compared to the other contemporary botanical gardens, the University of Virginia's Botanical Garden Plan has the following characteristics. First, like European gardens in the late eighteenth century, it evolved from being a physic garden to a botanical one. As such, it emphasized botanical research and education over medicine, creating a tree garden and a plant garden. Second, it differed from many European and American botanical gardens in that it rejected decorative elements, refused to install a greenhouse, and attempted to spread practical overseas plants suitable to the local climate. This study contributes to broadening the history of botanical gardens at the turn of the nineteenth century.