Problems on the horizon

Between 1929 and 1941, Davidson and his staff prepared the arboretum for native tree species, work that eventually proved wasted. The Depression saw enormous cutbacks in the university budget, which led to the layoff of most staff and many professors. To be able to get some work done in the herbarium, Hutchinson employed Gruchy as secretary, even though she was not a good one.

The 1930s were hard on the herbarium and the botanical garden (PDF), and the experience at UBC directly contrasted with other North American botanical gardens that existed independently of universities. The Montreal Botanic Garden, for example, owes its existence to the Depression, having been created as a government-sponsored make-work project in 1931. Similarly, the Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Garden in San Francisco also benefited from Depression-era government spending.

Listen to the audio clip: “Remembering the West Mall Botanical Garden” (streaming, 1.38 MB)

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Read the transcript: “Remembering the West Mall Botanical Garden”

The UBC Board of Governors never formally defined the area for the garden and arboretum, so in 1941, President Klinck recommended consulting a plan by A.H. Holland in future decision-making. Different offices and departments on campus, however, used different maps and plans to guide their work so the various people involved never did agree on boundaries.

The next year, the UBC Board of Governors approved Davidson’s request to formally add 2.23 acres (just under a hectare) to the Botanical Gardens and Arboretum. They noted the following, however:

should it be found necessary at a later date to utilize a part of this tract as a site for a museum, as recommended by the University Architects, certain of the trees would have to be removed but the majority of them could be preserved for instructional purposes.

With this lukewarm support, Davidson made improvements to the arboretum. At the same time, however, he had to deal with time-consuming staffing and maintenance issues as well. By the time he retired in 1948 as associate professor, 70-year old Davidson left his replacement, Thomas (Tommy) Mayne C. Taylor (1904–1983), an herbarium and a small botanical garden that had suffered greatly from lack of maintenance.