The University of California Botanical Garden was initially established in 1890 near Haviland Hall on the north side of campus by E.L. Greene, the first chairman of the Department of Botany, to preserve the trees, shrubs, and plants native to the Pacific Coast.

Modeled after the famous Crystal Palace in London, the garden's first formal glasshouse-style conservatory was built in 1894 by Lord and Burnham for US$16,000 and housed palm trees and other tropical plants but was later demolished in 1924 to make space for more parking and the construction of Haviland Hall.

In 1909, Strawberry Canyon was purchased by the university and in 1925, the garden was relocated to its current residence in Strawberry Canyon under the directorship of Thomas Harper Goodspeed, the university's Dean of Agriculture, where he stated “the eastward moving air draft from the Golden Gate … with consequent moderating influences on summer temperature and humidity, permit an association of plants, birds, and mammals not duplicated elsewhere in middle western California.”[1] Goodspeed and J.W.

Expeditions to China, the Andes, Southern Africa, Bolivia, Peru, Mesoamerica, Australia, New Zealand were conducted by Berkeley researchers and paleontologists to expand the garden's collections.

– exhibits flora from the region's countries, including: Morocco, Spain, Portugal, the Canary Islands, Turkey, and Syria, on a hillside with views across the San Francisco Bay.

– shows the diversity of Central American habitats with genera found in both mountain and desert areas such as Agaves, oaks (Quercus), pines, and a range of brightly flowered Salvias.

Along with the Asian section “the top half of the garden’s only Parana pine tree, a critically endangered species from Brazil [,] a prized eucalyptus from Australia’s Queensland region and a gum-leaf cone bush from Southern Africa” were also damaged.

[7] In response, a team of experts swiftly converged on the site, located high in the hills above the UC Berkeley campus, with the urgent mission of rescuing and rehabilitating the battered plants to salvage what could be preserved.

It holds historic significance, with its origins dating back to the early 1900s when plants were gathered from expeditions to western China and Tibet by explorers like George Forrest and Joseph Rock.

In addition to the Asian section, several other Bay Area botanical gardens also experienced losses from the same devastating storm, highlighting the vulnerability of these curated collections to the unpredictable forces of nature.