While the Botanic Gardens do not always fall on Oxford's main tourist trail, these historic grounds have proved to be a saving grace for people confined to the city during lockdowns. In my own case, four separate visits to the Gardens over the course of the academic year revealed them to be a destination that is full of surprises, a restorative tonic in any weather. Like the seasons they showcase, the Gardens are a changing yet permanent entity, undergoing dramatic mood swings while remaining regimented in specific patterns.

    As I write this review, almost a year since starting my Masters in 2020, the leaves are beginning to brown again, and the regretful, lingering goodbye to the summer mood is settling in. Common wisdom may hold this to be the time to start retreating indoors, but the past year has taught me differently. Against the pull of domiciliary warmth, I entreat those of you in Oxfordshire to follow my lead, brave the cold, and visit the Botanic Gardens!

    The Botanic Gardens are not merely some kind of fancy park; these verdant grounds have historical, scientific, and contemporary cultural value to appreciate. Founded in 1621, the Gardens are the oldest of their kind in the UK, celebrating their 400th anniversary this year (Visit, 2021). They have played a major role in botanical research and the teaching of related sciences at the University of Oxford since their founding, and today contain over 5,000 species of plants. Visitors with little knowledge of the history of botany can enjoy other aspects of the Gardens’ cultural legacy, as their societal impact is spread across books and films. Readers of fantasy novels, for instance, might recognise the unassuming bench nestled in the Lower Garden as the meeting place of the protagonists in Philip Pullman’s series His Dark Materials.

    In all honesty, I knew almost none of these facts before my first visit to the Gardens. To me, the Gardens were simply another green area in the city worth exploring while the Great Indoors was off-limits. Students get free entry, another fact which drew me in. As the rest of this review will testify, however, the Gardens offered much more than a free stroll through pretty flora. Although my initial motivations for visiting were not particularly profound, my experiences there would prove to have a significant impact on my year at Oxford.​

​Autumn

    On my first visit to the Gardens with friends, towards the end of Michaelmas Term, I discovered a rare space in the city unclaimed by libraries, colleges, or cafés. The gentle cascades of the fountain, symmetrically aligned with the walkways, created a calm, monastic-like retreat away from the hustle and bustle of Magdalen Street and the urgency of essay deadlines.

    It was immediately apparent how the Gardens, enclosed and spatially limited, contrasted with modern Oxford’s expanding architecture. Beyond their walls, I could see the rooftop garden of St Hilda’s Anniversary Building beaming across the sports grounds of Magdalen College School.

    Inside the walls was a world preserved in amber. Netflix and the entirely digital nature of my Masters course had seen me glued to screens nearly all term; but in the Gardens, my eyes could, at long last, feast on something tangible: the Orchard in full autumn regalia with bruised apples scattered on the ground.
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    Here was a setting ideal for solitary walks, reflection, and contemplation, but equally suited to fertilising friendships at a time when socialising was restricted. Displays offered a wealth of talking points for first-time browsers. (The phallic shape of the luminous green pitcher plants in the Carnivorous Plant House, for instance, sparked a conversation about plant pornography, which is an actual thing, believe it or not.) And for shutterbugs like myself, the Gardens were wonderfully photogenic. The backdrop of the Danby Gate featured in many an Instagram story, another way to connect digitally with friends.
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Winter

    A cold Hilary Term, combined with another lockdown, made the world shrink further into its shell. Nearly every establishment was closed off, yet the Botanic Gardens, somewhat miraculously, continued to welcome visitors, and I was comforted by the thought of returning  to them.

    Two months on from my last trip, the Gardens had noticeably transformed. The majority of plants in the taxonomic beds were enlaced in threads of frost, and any warmth which could have been drawn from the greenhouses was denied to us, since they too were locked away. But the Gardens again afforded me the opportunity to get out of the house, catch up with friends, and enjoy Oxford, albeit in dormant form. In winter they exhibited another kind of loveliness: my gaze was arrested by dustings of frost on withered ivy and the half-frozen surface of the lily pond.

Spring

     In Trinity Term, I took a studious approach to the Gardens. On previous ventures, I had mainly been on the lookout for Gram-worthy sights, but after two visits, I had come to see the Gardens as much more than a picturesque location. The extensive international collection of plants housed on the grounds had captured my interest, and I had decided they  merited my closer attention.

    During the spring, I explored the south-west corner of the Walled Garden with my housemate, a botanist and painter. This area contained a modern medicinal plant collection associated with remedies for a range of illnesses and diseases, from cancer to blood disorders.

    Riotous masses of shrubs and flowers mingled together in densely plotted rows. The true power of these plants was explained on information boards, curative properties proclaimed in embossed gold lettering. I learned that the seemingly innocuous creamy white flowers of Bishop’s Weed, for instance, concealed a drug for treating vitiligo and psoriasis.

    In the mix, we spotted some of the herbal remedies so frequently and insistently prescribed by our parents for various ailments, which brought the botanical display unexpectedly close to home. The displays also prompted memories of studying plant classification systems for my housemate. She went on to teach me the differences between flowering (angiosperm) and non-flowering (gymnosperm) plants in an entertaining one-on-one tutorial session.

    While perusing the Gardens’ living collection of medicinal plants, I did not make a connection between the species on display and the ongoing pandemic. Reflecting on my memories now, however, it strikes me that, as an expression of human endeavours to fight disease, the medicinal plant collection held very timely meaning for this chapter of our history.
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    I recall, for one thing, how medicinal plants,  have continued to be used in their unprocessed forms by millions of people even after the invention of synthetic cures, and that use of these plants for their curative properties saw a surge in popularity during the pandemic. The plots I browsed with my housemate were not relics of the past, but vivid testaments of our continued reliance on plants in modern times.

Summer

   My final visit to the Gardens was tinged with a sense of nostalgia. It was one stop on a trip a coursemate and I had planned to see the sights we had not had time to enjoy as tourists during term.​
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    Once again, the Gardens resisted being captured in a picture-perfect frame. Pale pink apple blossoms were beginning to fade in the Orchard, a shadow of spring’s decline. Even in the hazy sunshine, the falling petals were a reminder of the unstoppable march of the seasons and of the approaching barrenness of winter.

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​Conclusion

      Though unconfined to vases or window boxes,  the plants of the Botanic Gardens, from waterlilies to wildflowers,  are still cultivated for human use. In spite of this, the plants retain an enigmatic quality that separates them from the usual stuff of daily life. Like other elements of the natural world, the denizens of the Gardens are something of an ‘abominable mystery,’ to quote Darwin (1903, pp. 20-21), which cannot be solved no matter how many times you revisit them.

    The Gardens encapsulate in miniature the shifts we see in Oxford’s physical landscape from Michaelmas through Trinity. My visits at a time in which outdoor space was treasured more than ever allowed me to experience the seasons as if for the first time, like a new-born baby. I loved taking in the small details – leaves changing hues; episodes of wind, rain, and sunshine –while the bigger picture outside of the Gardens’ walls was nebulous to the point of incomprehensibility.

    Each outing to the Gardens had a unique social dynamic, as I was joined by  different people every time. By turns, the Gardens became a location for catching up with old friends, an opportunity to get to know coursemates better, and a chance to expand my botanical lexicon.  Returning to the same grounds time and again with new companions and purposes brought both consistency and variation to my visits.
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    Oxford’s Botanic Gardens are timeless and polymorphous, a site for continuous discovery. I see in them a reflection of the university year and the city’s cycle of the seasons.

References

Darwin, C. (1903). Letter 395: To J. D. Hooker. In Darwin, Francis & Seward, A.C. (Eds.), More letters of Charles Darwin (pp. 20-22). John Murray.
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Visit Oxford Botanic Garden. (2021). Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum.
https://www.obga.ox.ac.uk/visit-garden

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Image credits

Cover photo of the author in the Botanic Garden Glasshouses taken by Juliette Holland and Irina Boeru.
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All other photos which appear in this review taken by Ramani Chandramohan at the Botanic Gardens during the visits described.

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