THE great gardens of the world - the Tivolis, Bellingraths and
Sissinghursts - have flourished in latitudes blessed with a
genial sun. Yet a mere 6 degrees below the Arctic Circle, where
the thin winter sun visits for 6 hours out of 24, is the small
and tidy plot of Karl von Linne, known to the botanical world as
Carolus Linnaeus. In 1741, at the age of 34, Linnaeus was
appointed professor of medicine and botany at the University of
Uppsala in Sweden. In this capacity he took over the university
botanical garden, with an accompanying house where he could
collect his specimens and, with his wife, raise their five
children. Linnaeus proceeded to transform this two-and-a-half-
acre patch of cool Swedish soil into a major scientific
resource, a genetic living library. In his lifetime, Linnaeus'
garden became a pilgrimage site for the scholarly and the
titled. The garden, which still flourishes in the form he gave
it 200 years ago, and his house are open to visitors. While the
garden remains a place of study for pr