University of Oxford Botanic Garden

University of Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum
Autumn foliage in the Walled Garden
Type	Botanic Garden
Location	High Street, Oxford, England
Coordinates	51°45′02″N 1°14′54″W / 51.75056°N 1.24833°W / 51.75056; -1.24833Coordinates: 51°45′02″N 1°14′54″W / 51.75056°N 1.24833°W / 51.75056; -1.24833
Area	1.8 hectares
Operated by	University of Oxford
Status	Open all year

The University of Oxford Botanic Garden is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. Today it contains over 8,000 different plant species on 1.8 hectares (4½ acres). It is one of the most diverse yet compact collections of plants in the world and includes representatives from over 90% of the higher plant families.

In 1621, Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby, contributed £5,000 (equivalent to £744,000 in 2005) to set up a physic garden for "the glorification of the works of God and for the furtherance of learning". He chose a site on the banks of the River Cherwell at the northeast corner of Christ Church Meadow, belonging to Magdalen College. Part of the land had been a Jewish cemetery until the Jews were expelled from Oxford (and the rest of England) in 1290. Four thousand cartloads of "mucke and dunge" were needed to raise the land above the flood-plain of the River Cherwell.

Humphry Sibthorp began the catalogue of the plants of the garden, Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Oxoniensis. His youngest son was the well-known botanist John Sibthorp (1758–1796), who continued the Catalogus Plantarum.

The Garden comprises three sections:

A satellite site, the Harcourt Arboretum, is located six miles (10 km) south of Oxford.

The Danby gateway to the Botanic Garden is one of three entrances designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633. It is one of the earliest structures in Oxford to use classical, indeed early Baroque, style, preceding his new entrance porch for the University Church of St Mary the Virgin of 1637, and contemporary with Canterbury Quad at St John's College by others. In this highly ornate arch, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style currently fashionable, which had just been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones, and drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio's book of archways.