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Library treasuresThe Royal Botanic Gardens LibaryThe Library began in 1852 with the purchase of 26 botanical and horticultural books by Director Charles Moore. It now includes the miscellany of more than three centuries of exploration, scientific research and social history. The focus is Australia, and Sydney in particular, but science is international and the journals and books come from all countries and in many different languages. Our vision is a virtual library, abuzz with people accessing electronic journals and databases, linking effortlessly to images from Curtis’ Botanical Magazine from the 18th century, or perhaps the gorgeous prints from Banks’ Florilegium. At its heart is the collection itself, the real Treasures of the library, kept secure and safe. Some of these works are unique and our Library is the only place you can see a particular edition or early image of colonial Australia. Others are iconic publications, found scattered through public and private libraries of the world, but only here held together as part of a vast and important information resource for scientists, plant enthusiasts and historians. Adopt a TreasureThe Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation invites you to help us restore our important works in time for our Bicentenary by adopting one from now until 2016. Your contribution will fund vital conservation and preservation work, as well as the digitisation of rare works, and the cataloguing of the entire collection. For a total of just $1.2 million this priceless collection can be protected forever. The Library Treasures are presented in six stories:
We invite you to select a story at whatever level you chose. In this way, a number of people will share the adoption of each story. All adoptions over $5,000 will entitle benefactors to be recognised as Fellows of the Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation. These gifts can be pledged over five years. Some special Treasures, marked with asterisk (*), may be adopted exclusively at the Sir Joseph Banks Fellow level. >> Download Adoption Form Catalogue of Treasures of the Royal Botanic Gardens LibraryThe Age of ExplorationStarting with James Cook’s expedition to trace the transit of Venus on the Endeavour, the first encounters by the Europeans of Australia’s startling botanical uniqueness were recorded in exquisite detail by intrepid naturalists and botanists accompanying exploratory expeditions.
Plant hunters and floraThe passions of early plant hunters have yielded both valuable scientific findings, as well as producing startling works of art. Their extraordinary dedication and life-long scientific pursuits began and built on the scientific documentation of indigenous and world flora.
History of the Royal Botanic Gardens‘I have transferred the Sydney Botanic Garden from a mere horticultural establishment, as I have found it, to a Botanical establishment in addition, and Scientific men throughout the world now recognise Sydney as one of the principal botanical centres ofthe world.' J. H. Maiden. The story of the Royal Botanic Gardens dates back long before the bestowal of its ‘Royal’ prefix. Officially known then as the ‘Botanic Gardens’, this institution began on 13 June 1816 behind the high walls of the Governor’s Demesne. The Gardens has always been right in the centre of Sydney’s history and culture, and the Library has captured that involvement in images, sound and story. Photography*
Archival Treasures: Maps, Plans and Registers
Art and Artefacts
Stories of the Past
Generations of gardeningThe longevity of leading gardening journals and magazines attests to the hold that gardening has taken in our culture over the past few centuries. Generations of changing advice, scientific studies, landscape designs and fashions in gardening are recorded in our collections.
Botanical and scientific history‘If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.’ Sir Isaac Newton Today it’s impossible to conceive the directions in which science, and particularly botany, would have taken without the contributions of Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin and other ‘giants’ of the botanical world.
Work of Margaret Flockton*Margaret Flockton commenced work at the National Herbarium at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens in June 1901 as its first botanical illustrator. Between 1901 and 1927 she executed over 1,000 botanically accurate drawings, lithographs and coloured sketches that are still used for plant taxonomy and identification today. Flockton worked with Joseph Henry Maiden, Director of the Gardens, on the Forest Flora of New South Wales and the Critical Revision ofthe Genus Eucalyptus. Maiden named a Western Australian species of eucalypt after her, Eucalyptus flocktoniae. Margaret Flockton was a member of the Royal Art Society, which exhibited 33 of her paintings. She had a high reputation as a lithographic artist at a time when she was Australia’s only female exponent of the art.
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