Practical Botany was taught in the Medical School by 1888 the teaching of Botany had been transferred to the Natural History Department where it became the responsibility of R.T. Harvey Gibson, in 1894 Harvey Gibson's lectureship in Botany was raies to a professorship, the greater part of the endowment coming from Holbrook Gaskell (the second of that name in the family dynasty) who was a partner in Gaskill Deacon and Co a Widnes-based chemical firm. For the time being a laboratory was constructed in the roof of the old Asylum building, but in May 1901, a new Botanical Laboratory was opened on the west side of Brownlow Street, the building and site being presented by W.P. Hartley. The architect was F.W. Dixon. By 1903 the Department even had its own museum.

From 1976-77 the Department also collaborated with the Departments of Zoology and Genetics in offering a new honours course in Environmental Biology. Originally housed in the Hartley Building on Brownlow Street (and an annexe at no. 146 Brownlow Hill) in the mid 1960s the Department was able to take over the Nicholson and Thornley Buildings, recently vacated by the Chemistry Departments, but these buildings, even with refurbishments, did not really meet the Departments needs for new and up-to-date premises.

No department profited more than the Botany Department from the acquisition by the University of Ness Gardens, in the Wirral. Laid out originally by A.K. Bulley in 1898, a Liverpool stockbroker, and enriched by hundreds of specimens collected on his behalf from many parts of the world, these gardens were presented to the University in 1948, by his daughter Miss A.L. Bulley, together with a house and a handsome endowment. Part of the grounds, and most of the greenhouses, are reserved for experimental work, and have been immensely valuable valuable not only to the Botany Department but also at various times to other Departments such as Genetics and Organic Chemistry. They are the largest university botanic gardens in Great Britain.