This image is a scan from the garden's John Davidson lantern slide collection. UBC Botanical Garden has been continuously operating as a university botanical garden since 1916, but it has not always been in the same location. When the Point Grey campus was originally constructed, the garden occupied the heart of the campus. This image from that era gives an idea of what it looked like; formal evolutionary beds for teaching purposes formed the core of the garden, with an arboretum of mostly native plants ringing the edges. Much (95%?) of these original plantings have since been destroyed.

There is one object that connects the first iteration of the botanical garden with the present third version. The plinth in this image now stands at the centre of the modern Physic Garden, though the sundial on it has since been replaced.