The Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois, has purchased a world-class collection of books and journals from the financially strapped Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Boston to add to its existing holdings of about 20,000 volumes. The price of the sale is not being disclosed, but records filed in Massachusetts put the price at about $3 million. Money for the purchase came from private sources, Botanic Vice President of Education Larry DeBuhr told the October 29 Chicago Tribune.
The sale has been controversial in Boston, however, where several former board members have called for the resignation of Society President John Peterson, whose management has been called into question recently. Fred Good, the society’s treasurer and a trustee until he resigned this year, said, “This is a huge loss for Massachusetts. How is it that Boston can’t operate a successful horticulture society, that it has to sell a priceless asset like this to a similar organization that manages to be thriving?”
MHS has been in financial trouble for about 30 years, and has had to sell off many of its assets, including its 102-year-old building, Horticulture Hall, across from Symphony Hall in downtown Boston. Its new home is a 36-acre estate in suburban Wellesley.
Consisting of 2,219 books and 2,000 journals, the collection includes extremely rare illustrated volumes and complete series of journals. Botanic Library Manager Edward Valauskas said, “There are complete runs of old journals going over decades, some going back to the 17th and 18th century. It’s the history of horticulture as an academic discipline.” The earliest title, Theophrastus’s De historia plantarum, was published in Treviso, Italy, in 1483.
Posted November 4, 2002.