A botanical garden is a place where plants, especially ferns, conifers and flowering plants, are grown and displayed for the purposes of research and education. This distinguishes them from parks and pleasure gardens where plants, usually with showy flowers, are grown for public amenity only. Botanical gardens that specialize in trees are sometimes referred to as arboretums. They are occasionally associated with zoos. The earliest botanical gardens were founded in the late Renaissance at the University of Pisa (1543) and the University of Padua (1545) in Italy, for the study and teaching of medical botany. Many Universities today have botanical gardens for student teaching and academic research, e.g. the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, the University of California Botanical Garden, Berkeley and the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.
This page lists important botanical gardens throughout the world
