Botany pioneer William James Beal, born March 11, 1833, in Adrian, Michigan, became professor of botany and horticulture in 1870 at the State Agricultural College after earning degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. He experimented with a wide variety of plants and in 1873 planted different forage grasses and clovers in small plots in the depression now known as Sleepy Hollow, across West Circle Drive between Beaumont Tower and the Music Building. Likely inspired by Harvard's arboretum, he proposed a comparable botanic garden there and in 1877 expanded the garden into its present primary location south of his clovers and grasses collection. The newer plot, first known as the Wild Garden and later called the Botanic Garden in his reports to the State Board of Agriculture, became a popular destination and the site of his famous 1878 work to hybridize corn, inspired by evolutionist Charles Darwin. Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, Beal added soil to protect the garden from flooding by the Red Cedar River, while a stream flowing through the garden and Sleepy Hollow into the river was enclosed and covered for use as an underground sewer. After Beal retired in 1910, Professor Henry T. Darlington directed the garden until 1930, and in 1924 the State Board of Agriculture officially named it the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden. In the post-World War II years, rapid growth at Michigan State College led to a new library that displaced aging botany department greenhouses, and President John Hannah directed Campus Park and Planning director Harold Lautner to reinvigorate the garden to fulfill Beal's vision for a living laboratory and classroom. Under campus landscape architect Milton Baron, it was redesigned in its current form with distinctive plant collection beds and plant assemblages along the garden slopes.