Connections - The Forest Premeditated - Nurturing Illusions of Wildness in the New York Botanical Garden - NYTimes.com

• This garden in the Bronx, for example, began in 1891, when the New York State Legislature carved out 250 acres of the city’s undeveloped land for “the collection and culture of plants, flowers, shrubs and trees.” It was meant to advance “botanical science,” but would also provide “for the entertainment, recreation, and instruction of the people.” It was to be “a public botanic garden of the highest class,” in which visitors were as essential as the collection.
• Last week the garden received an institutional history it had commissioned from Heritage Landscapes, a landscape architecture and planning firm. The document is a cultural landscape report, which meticulously dissects the garden’s past, the better to see how the institution should execute its next master plan, requiring $479 million before 2015. (The report will be available to the public at the garden’s research library.)