A project inaugurated by Rafinesque while professor in Transylvania was that of a botanic garden at Lexington called "The Botanical Garden of Transylvania University." A company was chartered by Act of Legislature January 7, 1824, with a capital stock of twenty-five thousand dollars, five hundred shares of fifty dollars each. William H. Richardson, President; Thomas Smith, Joseph Ficklin, John M. McCalla, Thomas L. Caldwell, Directors; William A. Leavy, Treasurer; C. S. Rafinesque, Secretary. Other members were William Leavy, senior, Elisha Warfield, J. Harper, James W. Palmer, Horace Holley, Charles Caldwell, Benjamin W. Dudley, Charles Humphreys, Gabriel Slaughter, Thomas Wallace, John Roche, Charles Wilkins, Benjamin Gratz, Richard Higgins, John W. Hunt, B. R. McIlvaine, Joseph Boswell, Samuel Brown, and Daniel Drake. We gather from the prospectus (1824) that this garden was intended to be a charming resort for the elite of Lexington, who were expected to stroll at eve, perchance, through sylvan bowers; it was also to benefit farmers and "the whole Western country" by supplying "the best kinds of fruit trees and grape vines, mountain rice, madder, senna, opium, ginseng, rhubarb, castor oil, new kinds of grain and pulse, etc." It was to be valuable especially to the medical students of Transylvania by affording opportunity to study the plants used in medicine. The single product of opium, it was judged, could be made to cover the annual expense of the garden. There was to be "a small but elegant building, with a portico, green-house, aviaries, bowers, museum, library, and many other suitable ornaments." Lectures and "practical demonstrations" were to be given there in Botany, Agriculture, Horticulture, Domestic Economy, etc. "Every individual admitted in the garden to hear a course of lectures" to pay "at least one dollar." To these ends a lot was procured on the south side of East Main Street,[32] within the city limits, and gardening operations commenced; but the garden was not a success. Though patronized for a time, as in duty bound, by its influential shareholders and diligently strolled in by the friends, principally, of the medical students, it was, after the departure from Lexington of Rafinesque, finally pronounced to be nothing more than a weed-patch and abandoned before any building was erected on it. In fact, from the testimony of old citizens, it would appear that no improvements were ever made there except the laying out of wide walks and the planting of various shrubs and wild flowers, chiefly such as were common upon the highways in Kentucky, but which unquestionably seemed remarkable to Rafinesque, who viewed them with the eye of a botanist exclusively.