| This study views the Missouri Botanical Garden as a natural history museum striving to balance and integrate the sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting demands of scientific research, public display, and education of graduate students, amateur gardeners, and school children. The method has been to reconstruct what the visitors saw, thought about and learned by examining the Garden's Bulletin and archival press clippings.;The founder, Henry Shaw, was advised by the preeminent botanists of his day to construct his garden along all three lines: research, display, and education, But as the first director, serving from 1889 to 1912, William Trelease perceived a lack of scientific affiliations and built graduate research with a first-rate library and herbarium. When leaders of the Board of Trustees called for "more garden and less science," Trelease saw his position as untenable. He was succeeded by George Moore (director from 1912 to 1953) who delivered more garden in the form of increased accessibility and new grounds and display houses. By continuing the Garden's scientific advance, the first two decades of Moore's directorship reflected an unprecedented integration of research, display, and education.;The effects of the 1930s Depression and World War II diminished the Shaw estate's ability to finance Garden activities and they declined. Some revial was possible after 1958 with new leadership and funding. But between the late 1950s and 1971 Frits Went and David Gates only served short tenures as director and were unable to lead a sustained recovery. For the past 25 years, the current director, Peter Raven, has led the rebuilding of the Garden as a major scientific and popular institution.;Over its long history the Garden has gained strength from the dynamic interplay of research display and education. Focusing on the fluid, ongoing solution and resolution of this inherent tension is key to understanding the Garden's past. |
