History
The garden was established in 1936 by Robert H. Montgomery (1872–1953), an accountant, attorney, and businessman with a passion for plant-collecting. The garden opened to the public in 1938. It was named after his good friend David Fairchild (1869–1954), one of the great plant explorers. Dr. Fairchild's extensive travels brought many important plants to the United States, including mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, dates, horseradish, bamboos and flowering cherries. David Fairchild retired to Miami in 1935, but many plants still growing in the Garden were collected and planted by Dr. Fairchild, including a giant African baobab tree. With the guidance of an influential circle of friends, Montgomery pursued the dream of creating a botanical garden in Miami. He purchased the site, named it after Dr. Fairchild, and later deeded it in large part to Miami-Dade County.
The garden was designed by landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, member of the Frederick Law Olmsted partnership, and a leading landscape designer in South Florida during the 1930s. The first 15 years saw the construction of its primary buildings and landscape features, including the Montgomery Palmetum, Bailey Palm Glade, Allee and Overlook, Vine Pergola, Amphitheatre, Gate House, Montgomery Library and Museum, 14 lakes, stone terracing walls, irrigation systems, Moos Sunken Garden, and Nell Montgomery Garden House auditorium. Later buildings included the Davis House (1953), Hawkes Laboratory (1960), Robbins Plant Science Building (1967), Rare Plant House (1968), Corbin Education Building (1972), Jean duPont Shehan Visitor Center (2002) and various additions over the years. A groundbreaking ceremony occurred in 2010 for significant new complex of buildings including the Paul and Swanee DiMare Science Village, Dr. Jane Hsaio Tropical Research Laboratories, Clinton Family Conservatory and Burns Building. The new science complex is scheduled to be completed in 2012 and was designed by Miami architect Max Strang.
Read more about this topic: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)