At present, China’s university botanical gardens mainly serve their own teaching and scientific research, and with the development of society, university botanical gardens should take into account both internal professional education and external public education in order to exert greater social benefits. Taking Cornell University Botanical Garden as the research object, this paper introduces its historical development, sorts out and analyzes its professional teaching for students and environmental education for the public, and puts forward enlightenment for the construction of university botanical gardens in China, including taking “education” as the main content of the work of college botanical gardens, developing human-centred educational services for different groups of people, improving the interpretation system of college botanical gardens, and giving full play to the role of landscape architecture discipline in the construction of university botanical gardens.