Oxford Botanic Garden

Stone walls enclose the Oxford Botanic Garden, the oldest university botanic garden in Great Britain. Henry Danvers, the Earl of Danby, founded the site in sixteen twenty-one as a physic garden to teach medical students about medicinal plants. Before the garden could take root, the low-lying meadow beside the River Cherwell required four thousand cartloads of muck and dung to raise the ground above the flood plain.