American botanist John Bartram founded the garden on his farm, miles outside south of the then-borders of Philadelphia. He built its stone house between 1728 and 1731, added a kitchen around 1740, and installed a Palladian-inspired, carved facade between 1758 and 1770. The house still stands, as does his original garden and greenhouse. Three generations of the Bartram family continued the garden as the premier collection of North American plant species in the world. The current collection contains a wide variety of native and exotic species of herbaceous and woody plants. Most were listed in the Bartrams' 1783 broadside Catalogue of American Trees, Shrubs and Herbacious Plants and subsequent editions. The garden also contains three notable trees:
Franklinia alatamaha: John and William Bartram discovered a small grove of this tree in October 1765 while camping by Georgia's Altamaha River. William eventually brought seeds to the garden, where they were planted in 1777. The species, named in honor of John Bartram's friend, Benjamin Franklin, was last seen in the wild in 1803. All Franklinia growing today are descended from those propagated and distributed by the Bartrams, who are credited with saving it from extinction.
Ginkgo biloba: This male ginkgo is believed to be the last of three original ginkgoes introduced to the United States from China, via London, in 1785.
Landscape history
Bartram's Garden is the oldest surviving botanic garden in the United States. John Bartram, the well-known early American botanist, explorer, and plant collector, founded the garden in September 1728 when he purchased a farm in Kingsessing Township, Philadelphia County. John Bartram's garden began as a personal landscape. With his lifelong devotion to plants, it grew to become a systematic collection as he devoted more time to exploration and the discovery of new North American species and examples. Its evolution over time both reflected and fostered Bartram's vital scientific achievements and important intellectual exchange. Although not the first botanic collection in North America, by the middle of the eighteenth century Bartram's Garden contained the most varied collection of North American plants in the world. John Bartram was at the center of a lucrative business centered on the transatlantic transfer of plants. Following the American Revolution, Bartram's sons John Bartram, Jr. and William Bartram, continued the international trade in plants. They expanded the family's botanic garden and nursery business. Following his father's lead, William became an important naturalist, artist, and author in his own right. Under his influence the garden became an educational center that aided in training a new generation of natural scientists and explorers. William's travel book, published in 1791, chronicled his explorations in the South and remains a milestone in American literature. After 1812, Ann Bartram Carr, a daughter of John Bartram, Jr., maintained the family garden and business with her husband Colonel Robert Carr and his son John Bartram Carr. Their commercial activities remained focused on international trade in native North American plants. Domestic demand also grew under their management. In 1850, financial difficulties led to the historic garden's sale outside the family to Andrew M. Eastwick, who preserved it as a private park for his estate. Upon Eastwick's 1879 death, a campaign to preserve the garden was organized by Thomas Meehan, in Philadelphia. A national campaign for funds was aided by Charles S. Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1891, control of the site was turned over to the City of Philadelphia. It remains protected as a city park. Since that time, the John Bartram Association, formally organized in 1893, has overseen preservation efforts and historical interpretation of the garden, the John Bartram House, and a number of surviving outbuildings. The garden's plant collection includes only a few extant examples dating from the Bartram family occupancy; however, documentation for what was once in cultivation is rich. The first century of public ownership left the garden wanting in terms of care and interpretation. Despite the disappearance of a number of subsidiary physical elements in the landscape, the garden's rectilinear framework designed and laid out by Bartram during the second quarter of the eighteenth century is still recognizable. Bartram's Garden's physical endurance and resonant associative meanings make the site an unparalleled location for comprehending an array of historical facets related to John Bartram, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century botanic studies, the North American plant and seed business, and period domestic life in Philadelphia.
Rambo's Rock
Rambo's Rock was a large boulder on the edge of the Schuylkill River directly across from Bartram's Garden on the plantation of Peter and Brita Rambo just south of Grays Ferry. The rock no longer exists and has been replaced with a wharf.
In Fiction
The garden is featured in Diana Gabaldon's novel, Written in My Own Heart's Blood, chapter 24, as the setting for the book's reunion of the two main protagonists.
