In 1594, Carolus Clusius, who had arrived at the University of Leiden the year before to serve as prefect (director) of its botanical garden, cultivated the first tulips to be grown in the Netherlands. The enclosed garden is divided into quadrants, with an ornate pavilion in the center surrounded by alternating rectangular beds in which medicinal plants herbs, flowers and other ornamentals were grown and displayed, both for learning and public display.
In 1610, drawings by Jan Cornelius van't Woudt (Latinized as Woudanus) were printed in a set of four large engravings, one of which (in the detail above) depicts the University's renowned botanical garden. In 2009, four-hundred years after Clusius' death, this print was a primary source for the reconstruction of his hortus botanicus. Several decades before, a venerable beech tree, which had occupied the original garden that fronted the Academy building, died—and thereby made accessible for restoration the plot of ground where Clusius first had planted his precious tulips so many centuries before.
