Berry Botanic Garden - History

History

The garden began in the 1930s as the personal collection of Rae Selling Berry (1881–1976), who obtained seeds from plant explorers including Frank Kingdon-Ward, Francis Ludlow and George Sherriff, and Joseph Rock. She also collected alpine plants herself from the mountains of the Western United States, British Columbia, and Alaska. In 1938 she established the garden's current site, and the garden became a public, nonprofit organization in 1978. She had a two-story Bungalow style home built at the location in 1939, which was designed by Reuben T. Sinex.

Berry, the daughter of Ben Selling and Mathilda Hess, grew up in Portland and married Alfred Berry, a contractor who became the superintendent of Portland International Airport. For more than 30 years, the couple and their three children lived in northeast Portland's Irvington neighborhood, where Berry developed an interest in plants. Reading about plant expeditions to Europe and Asia, she began to provide financial support for the expeditions and through them to obtain seeds. By the mid-1930s, Berry had run out of room for her plants in Irvington, and the couple moved to "a bowl-shaped site nestled near the top of a hill". The property, just north of Lake Oswego, included springs and creeks, a ravine, a meadow, and a cattail marsh, and was partly covered with second-growth Douglas-fir.

In developing the garden, Berry focused on "exceptional plants", particularly rhododendrons, primulas, and alpines. In 1964, the Garden Club of America awarded her the Florens de Bevoise Medal for her knowledge of plants. In 1965, she won the American Rhododendron Society's first Award of Excellence given to a woman, and she was honored for her work by the American Rock Garden Society. Berry continued to expand her collection past the age of 80, taking field trips in search of Oregon's only primrose, Primula cusickiana (Cusick's Primrose). At age 90, she was still planting seeds in the gardens, and died at home at age 96.

In 1978, two years after Berry's death, The Friends of The Berry Botanic Garden, a nonprofit corporation, bought the estate. Donations to a $300,000 fund drive to make the purchase possible included $10,000 from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust in Scotland as well as support from plant societies, the American Rhododendron Society, and the Oregon branch of The Nature Conservancy. The Friends stated mission was "to preserve, maintain, disseminate, study and add appropriate plant material to the collections."

By 1983, the discovery that 39 native species in the garden were rare or endangered species led to the creation of the Seed Bank for Rare and Endangered Species of the Pacific Northwest. This was thought to be the first seed bank in the U.S. devoted entirely to preserving rare native plants. The seed bank consists of more than 14,000 accessions (packages of seed) from more than 300 rare or endangered plants of the Pacific Northwest.

The garden and home at the garden were added to the National Register of Historic Places in December 2002 as the Rae Selling Berry Garden and House. In January 2010, The Friends, citing financial problems, decided to sell the garden but to preserve the conservation program with help from Portland State University (PSU).