The history of botany at Cambridge University goes back to the mid-17th century, but it wasn't until 1760 that Richard Walker, vice-master of Trinity College, purchased a five-acre site and established a traditional physic garden.
Today's botanic gardens are direct descendants of a tradition that goes back millennia - Aristotle and Pliny had physic gardens.
The garden itself, contained in partitions of box, was originally a physic garden planted with medicinal plants known as semplici.
It was founded in the 17th century as a physic garden on an area the size of a tennis court near Holyrood Palace.