[3][4] In 1621, Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby, contributed £5,000 (in excess of £5,000,000 in 2018)[5] to set up a physic garden for "the glorification of the works of God and for the furtherance of learning".

He chose a site on the banks of the River Cherwell at the northeast corner of Christ Church Meadow, belonging to Magdalen College.

[6] The first head gardener was the Botanist Jacob Bobart who in 1648 published a catalogue of sixteen hundred plants under his care ('Catalogus plantarum horti medici Oxoniensis, scil.

Latino-Anglicus et Anglico-Latinus') with their Latin and English names; this was revised in 1658 in conjunction with his son, Jacob Bobart the Younger, Dr Philip Stephens, and William Brown.

[citation needed] The Garden comprises three sections: A satellite site, the Harcourt Arboretum, is located six miles (9.7 km) south of Oxford.

In this highly ornate arch, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style then in fashion, which had been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones, and drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio's book of archways.

[10] The core collection of hardy plants are grouped in long, narrow, oblong beds by botanical family and ordered according to the classification system devised by nineteenth century botanists, Bentham and Hooker.

The families represented in the Walled Garden include: Acanthaceae, Amaranthaceae, Amaryllidaceae, Apocynaceae, Araceae, Aristolochiaceae, Berberidaceae, Boraginaceae, Campanulaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Cistaceae, Commelinaceae, Compositae, Convolvulaceae, Crassulaceae, Cruciferae, Cyperaceae, Dioscoreaceae, Dipsacaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Gentianaceae, Geraniaceae, Gramineae, Hypericaceae, Iridaceae, Juncaceae, Labiatae, Leguminosae, Liliaceae, Linaceae, Loasaceae, Lythraceae, Malvaceae, Onagraceae, Paeoniaceae, Papaveraceae, Phytolaccaceae, Plantaginaceae, Plumbaginaceae, Polemoniaceae, Polygonaceae, Portulacaceae, Primulaceae, Ranunculaceae, Rosaceae, Rubiaceae, Rutaceae, Saxifragaceae, Solanaceae, Umbelliferae, Urticaceae, Verbenaceae, Violaceae.

The tank in the lily house built in 1851 by Professor Charles Daubeny, Keeper of the Garden at the time, is the oldest existing part of the glasshouses.

Tropical water lilies grow in boxes in the tank, including the hybrid Nymphaea × daubenyana named in honour of Professor Daubeny in 1874.

Some traps are passive, such as the sticky flypaper of the genus Pinguicula whereas others like the Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, actually move and are triggered by the unlucky insect walking across the surface.

[13] The Garden was the site of frequent visits in the 1860s by the Oxford mathematics professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell children, Alice and her sisters.

[citation needed] Another Oxford professor and author, J. R. R. Tolkien, often spent his time at the garden reposing under his favourite tree, Pinus nigra.

[15][16] In the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited, Lord Sebastian Flyte takes Charles Ryder "to see the ivy" soon after they first meet.

[citation needed] In Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials, a bench in the back of the garden is one of the locations that stand parallel in the different worlds that the two protagonists, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, inhabit.

[17] In the last chapter of the trilogy, both promise to sit on the bench for an hour at noon on Midsummer's day every year so that perhaps they may feel each other's presence next to one another in their own worlds.

Now a place of pilgrimage for Pullman's fans, the bench is recognizable due to graffiti such as "Lyra + Will" or "L + W" left by its visitors[18] and, since 2019, the sculpture by Julian Warren installed behind it.