An imperial past

The Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna was founded in 1754 by Empress Maria Theresa at the suggestion of her personal physician Gérard van Swieten. Van Swieten was not only responsible for the physical well-being of the Empress; he also reformed teaching at the University of Vienna on her behalf. During the time of the Garden’s first director Robert Laugier (term of office 1754-1768), the Garden mainly focused on the cultivation of medicinal plants, which played a major role in the education of students of medicine and pharmacy.

 The Garden’s second director and passionate botanist Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin (1768-1796) had the first greenhouses built, expanded the outdoor collections and organised the plants according to their relationship. Under his son and successor Joseph Franz von Jacquin (1796-1839), the Baroque garden was extended southwards to include the present group of conifers.

 Even before Darwin's theory of evolution, garden director Stefan Endlicher (1839-1849) developed a ‘natural system’ of plants based on their origin. After Endlicher's death, his successor Eduard Fenzl (1849-1878) arranged the plants in the Garden according to Endlicher's system. To achieve this, he redesigned parts of the Baroque garden into an English landscape garden.

 In the late 19th and early 20th century, the reputation of the Garden as an important scientific institution was consolidated. Around 1930, the Habsburg’s Kammergarten adjoining to the south-east was added, thus expanding the Garden once more. Since the 1990s, the Flora of Austria group, one of the core elements of the Botanical Garden, has been gradually established here.