UBC Botanical Garden
botanical garden at the University of British Columbia in Canada
The UBC Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located on the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver, British Columbia. It maintains a documented living collection of temperate plants for the purposes of education, research, conservation, community outreach, and public display. Established in 1916, it is the oldest botanical garden at a university in Canada.
It is a member of the Canadian Garden Council, American Public Gardens Association, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and the Plant Collections Network.
History
John Davidson, or Botany John, was appointed British Columbia's first provincial botanist in 1911. He was given two assignments: complete a botanical survey of the province's flora and establish a botanical garden and herbarium. Davidson first established an arboretum, nursery, and botanical garden on the hospital lands of Essondale in Coquitlam with the assistance of the patients.
The government then set aside two acres of land (0.8 ha) at the Provincial Colony Farm in Essondale (later called Riverview) near New Westminster for the establishment of the first botanical garden. After the closure of the Office of the Provincial Botanist in 1916, the botanical garden relocated to the UBC campus in West Point Grey. This involved the transport of thousands of perennials and shrubs across forty kilometres of rough roads to the new location.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “UBC Botanical Garden” as botanical garden at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as botanical garden at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2466506. VIAF identifies the subject as 141850265. The Library of Congress control number is n2004001874. Authority coordinates are 49.253, -123.250. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916 and 1911.
A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “UBC Botanical Garden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.