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VanDusen Botanical Garden Association Library Photographs

The VanDusen Botanical Garden Association was founded in 1966 to preserve the former site of the Shaugnessey Golf Club for use as park land, rather than have it re-developed for housing or some other purpose following the club's relocation to a new site in 1960. Funding for the purchase of the site was provided jointly by the City of Vancouver, Government of British Columbia, and W. J. VanDusen. The garden was named after VanDusen in recognition of his financial contribution. VanDusen Botanical Garden opened to the public in 1975.

VanDusen Botanical Garden is jointly operated by the Vancouver Park Board and the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association. The Association raises funds for the continuing development and improvement of the garden, and provides volunteers that contribute to various activities at the garden, serving as programme guides, seed collectors, master gardeners, and library and gift shop volunteers.

The VanDusen Botancial Garden Association Library Photographs consist of 35mm slide photographs collected by the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association and maintained by the library at the garden to be used as a botanical reference tool, to document the history of activities and events that took place at the garden, and to document research conducted by staff and volunteers about topics related to activites at the gardens such as photographs of gardens in other cities, or photographs of specimens in their native habitats.

There are two subseries of images:

Botanical specimen photographs

These are photographs of a specific plant, either showing the whole plant or a close-up of a particular part or parts such as leaves or flowers. Some photographs show multiple plants of the same or closely related varietals or species.

VanDusen subject photographs

These are photographs showing people, garden scenes, special events and other photographs not included in the Botanical specimens subseries. Photographs in the subseries were arranged by the garden library based on a subject vocabulary created by the library, and given titles based on the content of the image.

For more about the Garden and its history, see the VanDusen Botanical Garden web site