Kebun Raya Bogor (KRB) or Bogor Botanical Gardens is an ex-situ conservation facility that carries out the collection, maintenance, and breeding of various types of plants in order to form and develop new habitats.
It can be said that KRB is the ancestor of botanical gardens in Indonesia. If we look at its history, the construction of the Bogor Botanical Gardens was pioneered by Thomas Stamford Raffles, Governor General of the Dutch East Indies during the British era (1811-1816). However, the Bogor Botanical Gardens was only established after Raffles was no longer on duty in the Dutch East Indies.
Initially, the Bogor Botanical Gardens were part of an artificial forest that is thought to have existed since the reign of Prabu Siliwangi (1474-1513) of the Sunda Pajajaran Kingdom. The artificial forest or samida was intended for the purpose of preserving the environment as a place to maintain rare wood seeds.
Since then until the Dutch colonial period, this forest was left alone. When Indonesia fell into British hands in 1811, Thomas Stamford Raffles was appointed Governor General of the Dutch East Indies. Raffles, who lived in the Bogor Palace, was known to have a great interest in botany.
He was also interested in developing the Bogor Palace grounds into a beautiful garden. His dream was realized by a botanist named W. Kent. According to Raffles' wishes, the Bogor Palace grounds were transformed into a classic English-style garden.
This was the beginning of the Bogor Botanical Gardens in its current form. Here, Raffles also had time to build a monument for his wife who died in 1814, which is now known as the Lady Raffles Monument.
The Bogor Botanical Gardens were built during the reign of the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies Van der Capellen (1816-1826). Raffles' reign in Indonesia ended with the fall of Napoleon in 1816.
When the Dutch returned to power in Indonesia, a biologist named Abner expressed his desire to Governor General Van der Capellen to build a botanical garden that would be useful as a place for teacher education as well as a collection of plants for the development of other gardens.
On May 18, 1817, the Bogor Botanical Gardens were founded under the name 's Lands Plantentuin te Buitenzorg. The implementation was led by Reinwardt, assisted by James Hooper and W. Kent. Since then, plants and seeds from various regions in the archipelago have been collected in the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
After Reinwardt returned to the Netherlands in 1822, the construction of the Bogor Botanical Gardens was halted due to lack of funds. Around 1831, a palace gardener of Governor General Johannes van den Bosch named Johannes Elias Teysmann resumed the construction of the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
Assisted by Justus Karl Hasskarl, Teysmann succeeded in bringing thousands of plant species to the Bogor Botanical Gardens from various countries. Therefore, to honor his services, a memorial monument was built in Teysmann Park in the Bogor Botanical Gardens. Now, the Bogor Botanical Gardens have more than 13,000 species of trees and plants.
According to the official UNESCO website, as reported by NG Indonesia, the history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens shows that this botanical garden inherits extraordinary universal values.
The heritage value of the Bogor Botanical Gardens is not only the variety of plant species but also the landscape, historical buildings, artifacts, botany, nature and environment that have been preserved from generation to generation for more than 200 years.
The Bogor Botanical Gardens cover an area of 87 hectares with 15,000 types of tree and plant collections. The history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens has become a national identity and has contributed to global economic development. Its historical reputation has given birth to many research institutions and become a world-class tropical biology research center.
Scientific discoveries in the field of botany produced by the Bogor Botanical Gardens tropical botany research center have contributed to the welfare of humanity. For example, research on domestic plants and various export crops.
Innovation in the economic sector has increased the wealth of the Dutch government at that time through the exotic agro-industry of coffee, tea, quinine, tobacco, and many more.
In the historical records of the development of the Bogor Botanical Gardens quoted from the Kebun Raya website, at first this garden was only used as a trial garden for plantation crops that would be introduced in the Dutch East Indies.
However, when the Bogor Botanical Gardens were established, it actually became a momentum for botanical scientists in Indonesia to create a research center. Several research institutions were born along with the establishment of the Bogor Botanical Gardens, including the Bibliotheca Bogoriensis (1842), Herbarium Bogoriense (1844), Cibodas Botanical Gardens (1860), Treub Laboratory (1884), and the Zoology Museum and Laboratory.
It is recorded that there are 24 research institutions that have emerged from the Bogor Botanical Gardens, including the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) which was established in 1967. Precisely on May 18, 1817, Professor Caspar Georg Karl Reinwardt, a botanist from Germany, established a botanical garden next to the governor-general's rest house for research purposes. This date marked the beginning of the history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
At a young age, Reinwardt had become a professor of natural history at Harderwijk University in the Netherlands. Even at the age of 30, he had become the rector there. In 1816, the Dutch government asked him to become Director of Agriculture, Arts, and Education on the island of Java and he immediately began his research in botany.
He returned to the Netherlands to teach botany at Leiden University. The Reinwardt memorial monument was inaugurated by the German Ambassador together with the chairman of LIPI, Professor Umar Anggara Jenie, on May 17, 2006.
In the eyes of European scientists, this botanical garden has great appeal in the field of botanical research. Recorded in the history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens, a series of Dutch botanists have led to the rapid progress of the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
Since its establishment, the Bogor Botanical Gardens have become a major research center in the fields of agriculture and horticulture. Melchior Treub, a Dutch botanist who graduated with a doctorate from Leiden University, developed the Bogor Botanical Gardens into a professional research institution.
Treub received the Linnean Medal, an award for botanists in 1907. The Treub Laboratory that he founded is a research laboratory in the field of genetics for the conservation of Indonesian plants, preventing the extinction of plants in the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
The location of this laboratory is in the southwest part of the Bogor Botanical Gardens, adjacent to the Zoological Museum. The laboratory building is a marker of the history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens. Although more than a century old, the building is still well-maintained and still used according to its function.
So what is the role of the Bogor Botanical Gardens, formerly known as 's Lands Plantentuin te Buitenzorg or Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens as the oldest botanical garden since the 19th century? It turns out that many types of herbarium species of tropical plants originating from the Bogor Botanical Gardens are stored at Leiden University.
The discovery of the auxin hormone at the Treub Laboratory played an important role in the exchange of ideas, knowledge and expertise in tropical botanical agriculture. The discovery of auxin and mycorrhiza in the early 1900s was the golden period of Treub Laboratory research.
The richness of the Bogor Botanical Gardens collection is a reference for many tropical botanical gardens around the world for the management of authentic tropical plant collections. Not only in Southeast Asia, it turns out that the Bogor Botanical Gardens also make a significant contribution in Asia in terms of the acclimatization of oil palm planting before being developed and distributed to many industries and plantations.
The Bogor Botanical Gardens has integrity and is considered authentic by UNESCO. The reason is, the Bogor Botanical Gardens has integrity that is able to reveal the extraordinary universal value of building architecture that has historical value, the authenticity of planting arrangements based on taxonomic groups, heirloom trees and heirloom landscapes. A series of facts are historical evidence that the Bogor Botanical Gardens is a center for tropical biology research.
The integrity of the Bogor Botanical Gardens property is strengthened by the Bogor city government policy which determines the area around the city of Bogor as a buffer for the Bogor Botanical Gardens. Historical records of the Bogor Botanical Gardens show that it has been a place for scientific research since 1817. Monuments that have historical value are listed as 12 buildings that are considered to be able to maintain their authenticity in terms of their original design and function.
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