About the Lenhardt Library

The Woman's Board of the Chicago Horticultural Society established the Library in 1951. In 1959 it contained 584 volumes. With the opening of the Chicago Botanic Garden and its Education Center in 1976, the Library's growing collection of 6,000 books moved to a new facility to better meet the needs of its users. Now located in the Regenstein Center, it is open to the public.

Today, the collections of the Lenhardt Library hold approximately 150,000 volumes including books, periodicals, rare books, special collections, videos, DVDs,  slides, nursery catalogs, and the archives of the Chicago Horticultural Society.

The Lenhardt Library strives to provide plant science resources and accurate information to users by collecting, organizing, preserving, and sharing subject-specific materials for current and future use, while supporting all objectives of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

About Lenhardt Plant Science Library

The Lenhardt Plant Science Library is located in the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center. Although it is in a staff-only area, all of the materials appear in the Library’s online catalog and can be requested, in advance, for use in the main Lenhardt Library.

Specializing in plant science research resources, the Plant Science Library's holdings include approximately 1500 monographs and 200 scientific journal titles (over 80 titles available electronically). It is staffed by a science librarian.