Flower Power

2011-04-26T10:43:00.001Z

Please note that this blog is no longer being maintained. For the latest information from Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), please see our website: http://www.bgci.org

Thank-you.

Global EARTH HOUR March 29th- Turn off your lights!

2008-02-04T10:29:00.000Z

About a year ago, Sydney started a trend of turning off your lights for one hour in a show of support for protecting our environment. Soon after, London, San Francisco quickly followed suit. One year later, the organizers of Sydney’s Earth Hour feel that one city at a time doesn’t really cut it anymore. Which is why this year’s event is going global, with cities from every continent, including the US, participating in what promises to be the largest ever show of solidarity in the world on March 29th for Earth Hour.

education research resources

2008-01-15T16:14:00.000Z

Another couple of resources, but this time focused on research of environmental education.

Action research - improving learning through the environment is a "compilation of ideas for carrying out action research in order to improve learning through educational work in the environment".

Produced by the National Association of Field Studies Officers (NAFSO), it includes chapters on different methods of evaluation, such as letters and concept maps, evaluating fieldwork, residential courses and community-based environmental education.

It is available through the NAFSO website

ISBN: 1 901 642 10 00

Edited by: Adrian Clark, Helen Parry, Clare Shorter

Proceedings of the VIIIth Conference on Environmental Education in Europe 'Learning for a sustainable future: the role of communication, ethics and social learning in environmental education'

Editor: Mark Alderweireldt

CEEE Ghent, 2002

Although 5 years old now, this set of proceedings includes useful papers on EfS, focusing in Europe, with case studies and research. For more information about the CEEE conferences and the organising group, the European Foundation for Education and Sustainable Development, have a look at their website.

hasta luego from sarah k

2008-01-15T12:56:00.000Z

Well, after four years of working for BGCI, it is time I was off. It is my last day in the office today, clearing my desk, sorting out my files and generally trying to create a semblance of order instead of the chaos that has ruled my workspace.

I am leaving to take up a post developing the education department of a new botanic garden in Oman, I shall be moving out there in February and will be based there for between 1 - 5 years. The garden does not physically exist at the moment, it is still early stages, but is due to open some time in 2010. Keep your eyes on the BGCI news pages for the latest.

I shall be keeping in touch as much as possible, there is much I need to learn from colleagues about the practical aspects of BG education. Please do stay in contact, and I hope to see everyone at the next BGCI conferences! Until then, all the best, and I leave you in Julia's tender care.

Xxx

The Greatest Race on Earth - environmental pledges

2008-01-14T10:56:00.000Z

Just a quick snippet - standard chartered bank have funded a website with a handy personal carbon calculator, complete with country-specific suggestions for improvements and comparison with the average individual carbon emissions. There is also a good series of animations, leading you through different aspects of living, work, transport, home and leisure with ideas and how to reduce your environmental impact. Very attractive and easy to use. Have a look at the Race for a Living Planet site. You can also pledge to make environmental improvements, and see what other people in other countries are pledging.

Mini Madagascar and plants in the zoo

2008-01-13T12:16:00.000Z

A little while ago I received a package from Roger Graf, the head of education at Zurich Zoo. He had read the issue of Roots on Botanic Gardens and Zoos (Roots 1:2 Botanic gardens and zoos; synergies for the future) and was interested in the role that zoos and zoo educators can, and do, play for plant conservation. He sent me the very attractive and interesting guidebook to their new Masoala Rainforest exhibition, a partnership project between Zurich Zoo and the Parc National Masoala in Madagascar, a real hotspot for biodiversity.

The guidebook is extremely attractive, with fold out maps of the exhibition and the area of Madagascar it is based on, information about the national park, rainforests and the conservation issues facing the country, plus details on the development of the new exhibition. The main body of the guide is on the plants of the rainforest - illustrated within the exhibition. Each species has a lovely illustration, description including physiological, evolutionary, historical and ethnobotanical information and portrait including range, relatives and economic utility. There are numerous colour photos throughout, with text boxes describing recipes and cultural details to bring the rainforest to life.

Further sections describe the animal exhibits within the mini Masoala Rainforest and outline what can be done to help conserve the rainforest.

The book is a lovely example of how a guidebook can be extended, to provide so much more than information about a given exhibition, but become an introduction to an ecosystem, its importance and threats and the organisms within it. More information about Zurich's Masoala Rainforest can be found on their website and the guidebook can be ordered through their online shop.

PlantsCafe - open for business!

2008-01-12T16:37:00.000Z

A fantastic new resource, desgiend specifically for botanic garden educators, has been launched on-line. The PlantsCafe is part of the european Union funded Plant Scientists Investigate project. Four botnaic gardens, Natural Sceince museum garden in Trento, Italy, the University of Sofia botanic agrden in Bulgaria, Unvieristy of Innsbruck Botanic Garden in Austra and the royal Botanic garden in Kew have been workgn iwth teh Institue of Education in London to produce materisl to encourage teachersto ork with plants and brign their pupisl to botanic gardens.

Each fo the sites has produed a set of materials to use toexplore one of the four themes of the plant learngin curriculum produced

- experiments about plant growht

- plants as food

- plants and art

- conservation of plants

Each theme have up to 12 activiites, soem for useint eh classroom and some for use in teh garden, to explore the subject. The activities are descirbed in detail in free to download PDFs

Encyclopedia of Life coming to life

2008-01-08T11:19:00.000Z

Suzanne Sharrock, BGCI's director of global programmes, went to an interesting meeting last week in Washington, US. BGCI is a member of the institutional council of a new, very ambitious, project called the Encyclopedia of Life. They are aiming, in association with a huge number of museums, experts, databases etc (including Wikipedia) to create a comprehensive database of every species on the face of the planet.

They say "the Encyclopedia will serve as an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described. Encyclopedia of Life will be used as both a teaching and a learning tool, helping scientists, educators, students, and the community at large gain a better understanding of this planet and all who inhabit it."

They estimate that the initial sections (I think they are starting with fish) will be available in 2008, and the whole thing will be ready in ten years. It looks like an awesome project - they have a good Q and A section if, like me, you are wondering how on earth they are going to get so many groups to share their carefully gathered and hoarded data for no money. There are also some demonstration pages - I like the way you can select what level of user you are, i.e. novice to expert. They are planning to include a huge amount of data - it sounds really exciting and was inspired by the king of biodiversity, EO Wilson.

Do have a look at the video they have produced -it is really good.

Before waxing too lyrical about it, I do wonder about a couple of points...

- why is so much money being invested in a database when the species being listed are disappearing at such a fast rate?

- would the money have been put to better use carrying out conservation on the ground in some of the most biodiverse regions of the world?

- is yet another database of diversity(e.g. Wikispecies, Species2000) needed?

It would be very interesting to hear your views on this - have a look at it and let us know what you think.....

Happy new year - got any resolutions? If not, this video could help!

2008-01-02T13:25:00.001Z

Happy New Year and welcome back!

So, have you made any resolutions? Apart from usual (more exercise, less chocolate), I am trying to reduce my consumption. I started with some of the xmas pressies I bought ('experiences' like a trip to the cinema or going for afternoon tea, rather than manufactured goods, or alternative gifts such as mosquito nets or fluffy ducks through various developing country NGOs), but want to continue my 'dematerialisation' into the new year.

This is mostly inspired by Annie Leonard's 'Story of Stuff', a great video which explains, from a US perspective, some of the economic basis for environmental issues and the importance of the drive we all need to create towards sustainability. The video is 20 minutes, but packs a lot in, explaining the linear 'extraction - production - consumption -disposal' lifespan of our material goods. Some of the language is complex, but all the key terms are explained, and there is a comprehensive list of references included. The use of animated graphics really helps to bring the statistics to life and illustrate the problems.

The accompanying blog and comments are also very interesting, do check it out and share it with people - she is making some good points about the key issues and barriers to global conservation.

Quick couple of ideas and resources

2007-12-20T15:03:00.000Z

We are lucky in that we receive all sorts of interesting resources and materials through the post from our members and colleagues in education sites around the world. A couple that have been sent through this season are...

The Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden in Istanbul, Turkey have been really busy with their education programmes and provision. They have a super colourful new leaflet about he activities on offer and a fabulous activity book for their younger visitors

Qui a sauve Beni le petit bonobo? - a beautifully illustrated children's book telling the story of the capture and rescue of Beni, a bonobo chimpanzee whose mother is a victim of the bushmeat trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Produced to support the ape sanctuary, Lola ya Bonobo (paradise for bonobos in Lingala, the language of Kinshasa) and funded by Awely, an international organisation working to reduce human-animal conflicts in South America, Asia and Africa. The book has also had support from Appenheul Zoo and WAZA.

ISBN 978-2-9528827-0-5

Chicago Botanic Garden's Autumn Bingo is a nice example of a simply-designed, bilingual, fun activity sheet for children visiting the garden. There are stickers attached to the back of each sheet for children to stick on the squares when they find the subjects.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2007-12-20T14:52:00.001Z

The festive season is well and truly upon us in the UK, it is freezing cold, we are plunged into darkness at 15.30 and I am really full from eating too many left overs from the BGCI Christmas party!

Julia and I are both off on our holidays over Christmas, but will be back in the New Year, no doubt reinvigorated.

Until then, here is a little piece of festive cheer from us to you - enjoy and season's greetings to all!
Click here for Sarah and Julia just elfin' around

Active in Italy

2007-12-20T14:40:00.000Z

Annastella Gambini from the University of Milan visited BGCI last week. She is an amazingly enthusiastic professor of botany at the university and runs the botanic garden there. It as great to hear everything they have been up to. Recently Annastella has been developing a garden for the school within the university, that children of university staff attend. Focusing on senses, the plantings in the garden illustrate the ways plants change throughout the year and are designs to demonstrate adaptation and intra-species diversity.

Anastella also told us about a fantastic project, working with a chain of supermarkets to set up laboratories for plant investigation work within the supermarket. The idea being to learn and understand about plants, particularly the plants that feed us. Currently these labs are used by primary schools, whose teachers receive a guide on how to use the lab, and run by an educator, trained by Annastella and paid for by the supermarket. The hope is that the programme will expand so that the lab becomes a space where all children coming to the supermarket can go to whilst their parents are shopping, to learn about seeds and plants.

In May 2007, Milan held its first biodiversity festival, in a park near the university. Annastella set up a seminar on teaching about biodiversity attended by trainee teachers, with speakers including Sarah Lloyd from University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Sue Johnson from the Institute of Education in the UK. They are hoping to run the festival again next year and encourage the city's supermarkets to get involved by hosting stalls to demonstrate the biodiversity of food crops.

In her role as a lecturer for trainee teachers, Annastella also works on a series of on-line resources for students who are studying using distance learning to gain their teaching qualification. The support for these students includes videos, photos and materials to help in their lesson planning and preparation. This 3 month course is run four times a year by the university to encourage best practice, even if students are unable to go to university.

Other resources in the pipeline include materials for introducing biodiversity concepts to kindergarten pupils using potatoes and the construction of four new greenhouses to develop their education programme. For more information, contact Annastella annastella.gambini@unimib.it

As ever, any news you may have on your developments is more than welcome! Drop us a line!

Teens for planet earth

2007-12-13T10:15:00.000Z

Teens for Planet Earth is a programme run by the Wildlife Conservation Society in the US. They run the Bronx Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo and New York Aquarium in New York and have extensive in situ and ex situ conservation programmes. A few years ago it was realised that girls were not taking science as an option at high school. WCS decided to address this through developing 'Girls for Planet Earth'. girls would come to a conference-type, 2 week workshop with WCS staff and learn how to develop, run and manage their own in situ conservation project within their own community.

Girls for Planet Earth has since been expanded into Teens for Planet Earth and has gone global. The website about the programme is focused at the participants, but includes case studies of the kind of work the students have been doing to improve their local environment and conservation in their regions and a series of web pages to lead teenagers through the process to start their own project. Most recently teams in Bangladesh have been getting involved, outlines of their work are also on the TFPE website.

Climate Change on the Living Earth

2007-12-12T17:09:00.000Z

Professor James Lovelock introduced us to the Gaia hypothesis back in the 1960s, where he postulated that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism. Almost 50 years on, this extraordinary octogenarian is still making waves - and big ones at that! A thought provoking and terrifying lecture he gave to the Royal Society in October has recently been posted on the Society's website.

Professor Lovelock claims that the International Panel on Climate Change has considerably underestimated the rate at which Climate Change is taking place and talks about the devastating impact it will have on natural systems. He takes an apocalyptic view of the future seeing up to eight billions of humans faced with ever diminishing supplies of food and water in an increasingly intolerable climate. As you can imagine, most people left the lecture dumb struck!

Nevertheless, I believe we can't and musn't give up! Even if there's is nothing we can do to stop the earth warming because of the carbon already deposited (and continuing to be deposited) into the atmosphere, we still need to adapt our lifestyles to be more in tune with the earth. This of course requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about and relate to the planet - we have to see ourselves as part of it, not separate to it - which brings us back to Gaia.

Parallel universes, awards and acting like wolves

2007-12-10T11:30:00.000Z

I was at the British and Irish Aquarium and Zoo Association (BIAZA) annual communication and education conference last week. I'm one of the external judges for their education wards - they have categories for formal and general public education. I think the awards are a great idea, they help to promote and share best practice among educators, raise the profile of education within a site and acknowledge the hard work that education departments put into their programmes. Plus of course, winning wards is always great for media interest and for funders to see. Details of the 2005 and 2006 winners are on the BIAZA website.

Other than the award ceremony, there was also four days packed with site visits and paper presentations. Of particular interest were some marketing presentations about using the Internet and creating profiles for sites online - making the most of the Internet as a space to create presence for your organisation. Any institution can make a facebook profile, a myspace page, upload videos onto youtube and of course write blogs!

The Living Rainforest director, Karl Hansen, presented on their plans to develop the world's first carbon neutral glasshouse - a very exciting scheme, and one which fits in very well with the need to improve the sustainability of botanic garden sites. They are looking for corporate partners to raise the final portion of funding to ensure the project goes ahead. Details are on the website.

We also took part in a fantastic 'Speaking Wolf' workshop, by education award winner Wildwood, and heard all about an evaluation programme that Dutch zoos have been taking part in. I spoke about the award scheme and some of the best submissions, along with how to develop a good submission for the 2008 awards.

It would be very interesting to hear how you feel about the idea of awards - do you think botanic garden education staff would be interested in submitting their programmes for consideration if BGCI set up an awards programme? Let us know!

Eden up for some serious money

2007-12-07T17:01:00.000Z

BG educators in the Uk are being badgered today to participate in a public vote on how to spend £50 million. This money is from the UK's national Lottery and for the first time the lottery are using television programme and a public vote to decide how to spend this pot of money. There are four projects in the competition, including the Eden Project's plans for the 'Edge'. This would be their third 'biome' and is intended to illustrate people and plants 'on the edge'

Eden are describing the project as:
The Edge will be a landmark new building at the Eden Project.
Its scale and ambition will make the Edge an international icon of sustainability, showing mankind is capable of amazing things. The building will be a model of cutting-edge architecture and technology, harvesting water and energy from the sun, wind, and rain to show how we all might live in the future. It will be a testament to one-planet living, built to the lowest possible carbon footprint and designed to last.
Inside… …there will be desert, oasis and water gardens on a scale never attempted. Underneath… …a series of interlocking underground chambers will provide spaces for some of the great voices of the age – artists, writers, scientists and musicians - to work with communities and families and share the best ideas they have for improving their lives and environments, now and in the future.

The other projects also sound interesting (have a look at the 50 million pound giveaway website to see), but this is a great opportunity for a member of the botanic garden community to increase their capacity for conservation education and sustainable development...we've got our fingers crossed!

UK educators explore the GSPC for themselves

2007-12-05T12:58:00.000Z

Julia and I were enjoying the autumn sunshine at the annual Botanic Garden Education Network conference last month, along with 63 others from 24 organisations. It was a super conference, always good fun to catch up with the members, but most importantly the focus was on the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. The keynote speeches were excellent, started off by Peter Wyse Jackson's summary of the how, what, why, where and when of the GSPC, then followed with presentations on each of the five objectives of the GSPC:

Objective 1 of GSPC – Understanding and Documenting Plant Diversity, Trevor Dines, Plantlife

Objective 2 of GSPC – Facilitating harmony, identifying gaps and promoting mobilisation of resources for plant conservation Chris Cheffings, Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

Objective 3 of GSPC – the ecosystem approach to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity Monique Simmonds, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Objective 4 – Piloting targets, developing and implementing the thematic programmes of work of the Convention Jayne Manley, Plantlife.

Objective 5 – Building capacity for plant conservation. How are we doing?Deborah Long, Plantlife.

Each presentation provided a very clear summary of what was happening in the UK with the targets of the GSPC, who was doing what, what had been achieved, what was left to do up to and beyond 2010 and what the challenges are. I found it really helpful to gain an understanding of how different organisations and institutions are contributing to the GSPC. It makes it much more tangible when particular actions are gradually achieving the strategy's targets.

I think part of the intangibility of the GSPC for me is that Target 14 lands firmly at the feet of the educators, is huge and cross-cutting for all the other targets as well. We may not ever know if we can or if we have achieved the target, as it is so difficult to measure. However, the workshops at the BGEN conference provided some great ideas of how we can contribute to the other targets through education and communication provision.

One great example was a workshop on alien invasive species by Plantlife International. Did you know that invasives are the second biggest threat to UK biodiversity and the main source of invasives are gardens? Education therefore has vital role to play in convincing anyone who has or uses a garden that there is a problem and they can help. Plantlife have developed a programme on aquatic invasives and have loads of information on their website about invasives in the UK.

Julia and I also ran a workshop on Target 14 - we wanted to get BGEN members talking about how BGEN can take T14 forward in the UK. We had some great suggestions and ideas. we are still putting the report together, but will post it up on the blog when we have pulled out the main action points. Other workshops covered topics such as teaching about food security, native flora, sustainable procurement and organic gardening. The workshop descriptions and the congress papers are all on the BGEN website, do have a look to see what was discussed.

I really think that this format of conference worked very well to get the network member on board with the GSPC - and would suggest it as a good topic for any network meeting to encourage participation with achieving the GSPC.

There is more on BGEN on the website.

RBG Canada Video

2007-12-03T10:52:00.000Z

The Royal Botanical Gardens Canada have put up a video about their work.

interpretation resource

2007-11-30T11:17:00.000Z

A friend of mine, Kerry Waylen, who produced the well-being and botanic gardens report last year for BGCI, sent me a useful link via face book the other day. Face book is one of these Internet networking sites, where you have your own profile and can load up pictures and send messages to your friends etc. Anyway, she had come across an interpretation guide, produced in 1999 (but still relevant) by the American Museum of Natural History, designed for educators working in the tropics.

The guide is quite comprehensive, with chapters on exhibits, presenting, community outreach and evaluation. It is available in English, French and Spanish and is free to download, which is handy, and covers all the basics for developing interpretive programmes. Do have a look and let us know what you think by leaving some comments.

Taking teachers to the amazon

2007-11-06T12:53:00.000Z

The other week, we had a delightful guest visit BGCI. Phil Williams, a TV producer-turned environmentalist and educator extrordinaire, popped in to say hello. He runs an organisation called Plan-it Eco, presenting talks and runing school conferences about the inspirational world of the rainforest.

But he doesnt stop there - why talk about it when you can show people, after all? So, he also takes groups of teachers and occasionally school pupils to Ecuador to explore and experience the awe and wonder of the rainforest for themselves.

So far he has taken five school groups to the Amazon; students have an amazing trip, spending time in Quito, visiting the markets and museums, then off to the rainforest, with a canoe trip to a boarding school for indigenous children. These children spend 26 days at school and 26 days at home, as they have a long way to travel. Their school allows them to gain an introduction to and understanding of the outside world and uses its own currciulum designed to maximise the welfare of the idigenous people. The UK students work alongside the pupils on their school vegetable plots and other activities. This is followed by a three day trip to volcanoes, complete with a stay on a llama farm. Phil is taking ten primary school children to the Amazon in 2009, with a possiblity of being part of a televsion programme and is working with a few schools to develop this idea.

Phils has also taken eight groups of teachers out to Ecuador to inspire and encourage them to teach about education for sustainable development and conservation. "The trips can have amazing outcomes -one participant raised £16,000 to help the villiage and school we visited to gain an electricty supply" Phil said. To ensure that the impact of the trip is maintained, teachers produce a diary throughout their travels - with one teacher writing it per day. This is published on the return home, so that everyone receives a copy and a disc is made of all the photographs taken. This creates the perfect teaching aid for bringing the Amazon to life back in the classroom.

Phil does not just whisk peoepl around the world though, he works closely with schools on a range of activities, such as environmental assessments of schools - identifying points for increased efficiency. He reckons that these changes can save a school anywhere between £5,000 - £15,000. Phil gives talks to students on many curriculum areas and trains teachers in using education for sustainable development. Local authorities have been booking him to run student conferences investigating the global impacts of local desicisons, to encourage students to see how their choices have a far-reaching effect.

For more information, contact Phil on p_eco@tiscali.co.uk.

Hard Rain - tough issues, clear choices

2007-11-06T12:44:00.000Z

One of the many roles of the BGCI website is as a shop front - we advertise books, resources and journals which our members may find interesting or useful. One which has had the most response is the visual and poetic feast, Hard Rain. The book uses Bob Dylan's lyrics with photographs illustrating some of the worlds major issues - pollution, climate change, poverty and human rights. An outdoor exhibition has been put together by the book's authors which has been touring botanic gardens around the world - for the list and to see what the exhibition looks like, have a look on the Hard Rain website.

Now a new expanded version is being released with four new chapters; No Time for Denial by Jonathon Porritt; Hard Choices by Robert May; Beware the Climate Fixers by John Elkington and Geoff Lye and Changing Consciousness by David Bohm as well as a new photo essay by Mark Edwards with over 50 new photographs. Mark is also working on a new banner for the exhibition, provisionally titled, "Remaking a world gone wrong". This banner will emphasize the urgent need for a radically new, worldwide approach to our problems. It will be displayed alongside Hard Rain and will present solutions from around the world that need to be urgently scaled up.". A copy of Hard Rain is being sent to every prime minister and president in the world with a request that they outline their policies regarding the problems illustrated in Hard Rain, and asking that they suggest existing “living solutions” from their country that could be adopted more widely.

For more information about the exhibition, how to contact the team if your garden or site would like to host it and details of the itinerary, see the Hard Rain website. To order the book, use the BGCI bookstore

Big Draw

2007-10-17T16:01:00.000Z

The weather last Saturday was glorious, which was terrific because I spent the day at Kew with family and friends participating in the Big Draw. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this event, it’s a national campaign that aims to get everybody drawing, whether you're three or 93! This year it’s taking place during the month of October with events all over the country. Like many venues, Kew held their Big Draw event on 13 October. If you’re in the UK and want to participate, check out the website for an event near you.

The Big Draw event at Kew tied in superbly with the Henry Moore exhibition they’re currently running. Twenty eight amazing sculptures are sited within Kew’s extraordinary landscape. The day was inspiring, and with so many workshops to choose from it was impossible to go to all of them. As it happened we only managed to get to three! The children really enjoyed the workshop entitled ‘From Nature to Sculpture’. They spent almost an hour looking down the lens of a microscope at tiny seeds and drawing the details on sheets of paper. They then took their recordings outside and made larger pictures using charcoal and these were displayed on a long fence in front of the Orangery, where people were taking lunch and drinking cups of teas and coffee. Incidentally, there was a notable abundance of ladybirds flying around and settling all over the Orangery. There must have been hundreds! It was a spectacular site. I’ve spent time googling about ladybirds but can’t find any answers to why there were so many – if any one’s got an idea, let me know!

Another workshop we participated in, and that was good fun, was ‘Midnight Garden’. The children got to handle some amazing specimens from the Arum family, draw round them on black paper and then cut them out to make a giant frieze. As expected, they chose the largest specimens and then lost heart cutting them out, leaving the parents with aching hands! Nevertheless, they were proud of their contribution and the visual result was terrific as you can see from the pictures. I don’t know how many people came to Kew that day, but certainly visitor numbers were up. The conclusion has to be - art is a fantastic way to engage people in the natural world!

pizza, pasta, ice cream - oh yes and a botanical conference

2007-10-16T12:29:00.000Z

I've just got back from a few days in the delightful town of Palermo in Sicily, where the Italian Botanic Society had their 102nd meeting. There was a good representation by BGCI and BGCI members at the congress - Sara Oldfield (BGCI secretary general) made a rousing speech on the need for botanic gardens to become more involved with dealing with climate change, I talked about the global snapshot of education in botanic gardens and presented a few case studies (RBG Melbourne, RBG Cranbourne, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and Eden). BGCI had suggested some speakers to the wonderful congress organisers - so Dave Aplin from Meisse, Adil Guner from Nezahat Gokyijit Botanic Garden in Turkey and David Rae from RBG Edinburgh all presented on the latest from their gardens.

David and Dave struck a common chord actually - the need for gardens to really think about what they are doing and where they are going in a clear, objective and focused way. Meisse has been reviving its collection of succulents - and found they need to strip down about 2/3 of thier collection to re-start the succulent conservation programme (see Dave's article on the BGCI website), and also their participation in the indices seminum.

David was talking about the master planning being carried out at RBG Edinburgh, looking at not only the scientific and conservation aspects of the collection but also taking a landscape approach. They have produced clear catalogues of the living collections and a collections policy so that all the plants are adequately described and to ensure that the collection is relevant to the GSPC.

Their presentations really highlighted that gardens need to be constantly reviewing and evaluating their work and ensure that they are indeed working towards clear aims and objectives. I don't think it is any different for education programmes either - have you reviewed your education provision recently? Let us know what you found out and what changes you made.

welcome to our blog

2007-10-16T11:00:00.000Z

Sarah D - the BGCI website guru tells me that the education blog was one of the most popular links from her fabulous newsletter - Cultivate. This means that there must be a whole bunch of new people reading the education blog - welcome! Cultivate also has its own blog now - so you can easily stay updated

The Flower Power blog has been a bit of an experiment, which to be honest Julia and I are still getting to grips with, but it has been great receiving a few comments and suggestions from readers. We really want this to provide an interactive tool - a way that BGCI members and supporters can find out a bit more about what the education department does and most importantly become involved.

So, we want to hear from you! Do send any comments or suggestions in - they can then be published on the blog for other users to read and we can get some good discussions going. What projects are you working on at the moment? have you found any great new resources? What new developments are there in your garden? Let us know and we can share it and discuss it- building a stronger and more effective community for plant conservation.

Oh, and if you subscribe to the blog (use the links on the right), it will send you updates automatically every month, so you don't have to keep checking in case you have missed something!

water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink....

2007-10-16T10:39:00.000Z

....which i think sums up the water problems faced by the planet- even as I type, Planet Ark (the Reuters' environmental news arm) has details of the water problems all over the world - floods in Tunisia, Spain, Haiti and Costa Rica, while continued droughts devastate Australia and threaten the coffee harvest in Brazil.

So, it is appropriate that the next issue of Roots - out at the end of the month, is all about water. Julia and I have been working on it over the past couple of days - proof reading, writing captions, checking and re-checking the text (always a challenge with the sections in French and Spanish). Our designer will stick in our corrections, send it back to us for a final check before it goes off to the printers.

We've got some great articles from all over - Cuba, Australia, USA, Reunion and South Africa, looking at water wise garden design, water education, the role of botanic gardens in malaria prevention and an ingenious scheme for water provision from PlayPumps International. As always, there are a series of resources connected to the topic and we are including a fact sheet containing some key figures about the world's water and sanitation situation, quite an eye-opener.

I'll put up another message when Roots has been mailed out, so you know to expect it. In the meantime, many thanks go to all our contributors and fabulous group of translators who make each issue happen!

Plans for the future

2007-10-03T13:38:00.000Z

As I rushed for my connecting flight in Copenhagen, somehow I knew my luggage wouldn’t make it. Unfortunately, I was right and arrived in Riga at 10.30pm with just my handbag. Thankfully I’d packed my presentation for the next day. I was in Riga at the invitation of the University of Latvia to present about the role of botanic gardens in education and future trends. The University wants to revive its botanic garden and as a first step decided to hold an architectural competition. Five teams of architects from five countries traveled to Riga to participate in a four day workshop. It was a fascinating process.

The first day was the competition brief which involved presentations from a range of stakeholders and two visiting ‘experts’, Leif Schulman, Director of the Helsinki Botanic Garden and me. My job had been made much easier thanks to the input of several colleagues working in botanic gardens who sent me really useful information and images about their education spaces (thanks Michael, Jacky, Jeri, Shawn and Trevor!). During the afternoon we were taken on a tour of Riga city, the largest city in the Baltic States. The city is absolutely beautiful and certainly deserves to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Then on to the botanic garden which is situated on the left hand side of the river Daugava, a short bus ride away from the centre. The 15 hectare botanic garden has enormous potential. Its main collections consist of azaleas, rhododendrons, magnolias, dahlias, roses, apricots and peaches and hardy perennials. The displays of flowers were lovely and clearly the population of Riga enjoys visiting the garden.

That evening I found time to interview Anta (Director) and Signe (Deputy Director) of the garden. You can see the video on BGCI's website.

An open forum was held during the second day of the competition for the architectural teams to ask questions of the stakeholders and visiting ‘experts’. I was amazed at how few questions were asked, but as someone pointed out to me the architects probably didn’t want to give away their ideas! The final few days the teams were busy working on their concepts and designs. Unfortunately I had to leave on the Friday evening, so I’m still waiting to hear about the winning designs.

Reflecting on the process, I thought it was fascinating. However, I came away concerned that the vision of the garden was being left in the hands of the architects rather than being articulated by the staff of the garden. Perhaps this will come later, but I feel that if the garden has a strong conservation mission then this will drive the design. For example, I was very interested to find out that the Faculty of Biology at the University is involved in a European project to protect and manage the coastal habitats in Latvia. During the Soviet era (1940-1991) access to the coastline was restricted and, as a consequence, the natural habitats have been inadvertently protected. Reading through the brochure that’s been produced on the project, there's no mention of ex situ conservation. The Botanic Garden, for example, would be an excellent place to carry out ex situ research on some of the plant species. I think it would be marvellous to re-create a dune ecosystem to raise awareness about the importance of this Latvian ecosystem and run education programmes on how the public can help protect it - especially as increasing numbers of the public will be visiting the coast over the years to come.

Sorting Vegetables - all in a day's work

2007-09-24T10:03:00.000Z

A year ago we gave up our family car, partly for economic reasons but mainly for environmental reasons. Day-to-day it works out fine, especially as we live in London which has such excellent transport links. Yesterday, however, I went to Bristol (West Britain) for a workshop. The journey, that in a car would normally take one and a half hours, took three and a half hours using public transport. I consoled myself with the fact that I was able to edit most of Roots on the way!

The workshop held at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden was excellent. Three botanic gardens - Innsbruck (Austria), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Kew (UK) - and a museum (Trento, Italy) have been working on an EU project called ‘Plant scientists investigate’. The workshop introduced us to a terrific range of activities that are included on their new website – www.plantscafe.org. Obviously we couldn’t try them all out but we had a good taste of the types of activities that teachers could do with their classes as well as activities that gardens could run with teachers and children. The resources on the plantscafe website are grouped under four themes - Conservation, Art and Plants, Food and Experimenting with Plant Growth. For the purposes of the workshop we focused on the theme of Food, mainly because Kew organised the workshop and this is the theme they developed. The activities we carried out were good fun and involved doing a diamond ranking exercise to debate the importance of plants, becoming detectives to deduce which vegetables matched with which evidence cards (an activity that involved good observation), sorting vegetables into families and carrying out a skit for our colleagues to guess which plant we were acting out. Everyone left the workshop fired up to find out more about the other activities. The website won’t be up and running until November, but I’ve no doubt it will be a fantastic resource for teachers and botanic gardens.

During the workshop we all had a chance to visit the newly relocated University of Bristol Botanic Garden. It’s a compact garden (1.77 hectares) but is well worth a visit. Its collections focus on four themes – Plant Evolution, Plants of the Mediterranean Climate Regions, Useful Plants and Local Flora and Rare Native Plants. They’re still planting up the garden so I’m looking forward to going back and finding out how it’s coming along.

Summer madness

2007-09-19T15:38:00.000Z

Well, it has certainly been a busy summer for the BGCI education department. We are all finally back in the office and working on the various projects that have been covering our desks for the past couple of months. Not that we have necessarily been out having fun in the sun - oh no, much work has been rolling on.

As a quick summary - have a look at the detailed blog entries for more details:

- Julia went off to Paris to SBSTTA for an in-depth review of the GSPC

- Sarah went to the 4th World Environmental Education Congress in Durban, South Africa

There are stories on this on the BGCI news pages
- How do we ensure learning in a changing world?
- MEERA - Making evaluation easy
- Emphasis on eco-schools
- Creating Partnerships

- Then Sarah and Julia had meetings with the lovely people from Durban Botanic Garden - Martin Clement and Chris Dalzell about organising BGCI's 7th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens - which they are hosting, probably in November 2009.

- We also met with some of the team from SANBI and WESSA (Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa) to discuss the possibility of running an International Diploma in Botanic Garden Education in Southern Africa - a very exciting project we are developing.

- Sarah had a few days in the Philippines working on a funding project and guide training workshop with Siit Arboretum and Makiling Botanic Garden in Los Banos....again have a look at some news articles for the latest from these two sites

- Designer labels all the rage at Siit Arboretum
- Growing garden guides

Since then, holidays in France and Wales, and back to the office for the new school term!

There's no rest for the wicked though, as Sarah is off to Palermo, Sicily, Italy to present at the Italian Botanical Society conference next week and Julia is off to Latvia - so keep your eyes peeled for reports from those when we get back.

The rest of the botanic garden community has been busy though - make sure you are signed up the monthly Education E-updates newsletter to keep in touch with your colleagues around the world.

Politics and Congresses

2007-07-24T14:32:00.000Z

July has been a very busy month for Sarah and me. At the beginning of July, I spent a couple of days in Paris attending the 12th SBSTTA meeting (Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice) which was holding an in-depth review of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. The political ruminations were fascinating and the unedited outcomes can be found at www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-12/official/sbstta-12-xx-en.pdf . Once this document is edited it will become the basis for the recommendations to the Conference of the Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). A disappointment for me though, is the lack of emphasis on increasing efforts to implement Target 14. However, on a positive note, there is a strong recommendation to facilitate financial support programmes to assist developing countries to effectively implement the GSPC. This is something BGCI and botanic gardens need to keep a watch out for! When funding streams become available we need to publicise this information. During the meeting, BGCI organised a side event on Climate Change and the GSPC. It was attended by about 40 people representing NGOs and country delegations. I presented a paper on BGCI’s involvement in facilitating Target 14 (Communication, education and public awareness) and stressed the need to include plant-based education in environmental education. Who knows whether my talk will have any impact – but it was important to say!

While I was in SBSTTA, Sarah attended the 4th World Environment Education Congress (WEEC) in Durban, South Africa where she presented a paper on the role of botanic gardens in environmental education, a workshop on promoting education and awareness about plant conservation and a poster on BGCI’s education programme. Sarah made several good contacts and attended some very interesting papers. We’ll keep you posted about when they’re published.

At the end of the WEEC, I met Sarah for four days of meetings with our colleagues at the Durban Botanic Garden to plan BGCI’s next education congress. Chris Dalzell, Curator, heads up a wonderful team of people, keen to run a first class congress and open their beautiful garden to delegates from all over the world. The meetings we had were full of ideas about how we could make the congress relevant to the big picture (eg Climate Change, Millennium Development Goals) and as environmentally sustainable as possible (carbon neutral, zero waste, local food, etc). Sarah and I came away energised and full of enthusiasm for developing the congress - with lots of work to do! In the next few months we'll start fleshing out the structure for the congress but in the meantime if you have any thoughts on how we can make this congress relevant to you, please get in touch.

how are we doing?

2007-06-19T16:31:00.000Z

Last year, BGCI members were asked for their opinions on some of our materials and resources that we produce. Obviously we are a member organisation, so everything we do pretty much is for our members, whether practical assistance, training, resources or advocacy. Because of this, it is important we ask for your feedback to make sure we are doing the right things! of course, this is also the basis for evaluation - which there is plenty of info about on the BGCI website.

Anyway, the feedback from the study has been analysed and a report written, and we are working on the various ways to respond to everyone's ideas.

If you have more ideas and feedback for us - whether on Roots or Cuttings, or the education website, do let us know. We've also got some new ideas - what do you think about them?

We are thinking about developing an education email group (list serve) for botanic garden educators around the globe. Would you be interested in joining?
Another idea we have is to develop an on-line distance learning course on botanic garden education. Is this something you would find valuable to participate in?

Do you have any other suggestions for programmes that would be useful for BGCI to do?

We want to know what you think and what you would find helpful / useful / interesting for BGCI to provide! Drop us a line, or post a comment on the blog!

Interview exclusive....

2007-06-19T16:27:00.001Z

...to BGCI's education e-update. You can now subscribe to our monthly free education newsletter on the website. The next issue is due out tommorow and has some great bits and pieces in it. Also included is an interview with Malta Qwathekana, director of environmental education at Pretoria Botanic Garden, South Africa. Find out Malta's personal philosophy on education, her favourite plant and how she got into EE in the first place! Download the interview

GSPC and education

2007-06-19T16:15:00.000Z

It is warm in the office today. For once we don't have to blame global warming, the UK summer is officially here! Whilst thinking about issues on climate change and other conservation issues facing plant diversity it led me back to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, the 16-point plan for saving the world's floral diversity. So inspired, I have been rejuvenating pages on the BGCI education website on the GSPC, and on the Plants 2010 (website of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation) looking at
- what it is
- what the targets are
- who is involved
- the role of educators in the GSPC
- reports from national consultations on the GSPC

Some of the reports came from consultations arranged by BGCI last year, in China, Brazil, Russia, USA, Indonesia and the UK. These were reported on at the education congress in Oxford in September, and at the congress in Wuhan, China.

Next stop, Julia, BGCI's head of education is off to the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice meeting in Paris in July to meet and greet and talk to participants about the outcomes of these stakeholder consultations. She'll report on it on her return.

In the meantime, you can also get inspiration on how your own garden is contributing to the GSPC by looking at the website and reading the national and organisational documents connected with it.

Wining and dining to promote UK zoos

2007-06-13T09:52:00.000Z

Monday night saw me at the seat of power in the UK - the Houses of Parliament, at Westminster, for a reception to 'celebrate the work of BIAZA and its membership'. BIAZA is the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquaria, a hard working network and conservation, education and scientific wildlife charity.

The reception was to bring the work of zoos and their role in conservation to the attention of UK decision makers. By boosting their profile, and explaining exactly what it is that zoos do, with their complimentary activities of scientific research, CEPA and conservation projects, this helps to ensure that policy makers keep zoos in mind as potential partners when developing ideas. The higher the profile, the higher the regard for zoos and their work and the more they will be involved by policy makers as stakeholders in conservation discussion.

This advocacy role of BIAZA is very important. None of their members can reach politically powerful individuals by themselves, but as part of a network, they benefit from strength in numbers. BIAZA provides a good model for anyone who is a member of a national network, whether of botanic gardens or environmental education etc. By working together, gardens can also benefit by being greater than the sum of their parts, particularly on advocacy.

For more information on BIAZA's role and the way it works, download their leaflet and have a look at their website.

communication sensation continued

2007-06-12T14:36:00.000Z

I promised to let you know when the write-up from the BGEN training day on family packs was ready to be accessed. Well, it is - there are also write-ups from the London Parks and Greenspaces interpretation training session, and from another BGEN training session on using volunteers.

I hope you find them useful - remember you can always submit your own experiences of these methods and tools using the education news form!

Reviewing and renewing - BGCI's US office

2007-06-12T11:10:00.000Z

For the past few months, BGCI has been short of a team in the US, our wonderful colleagues moved to pastures new and the US project has been undergoing review. Rick Daley, ex-director of Denver Botanic Gardens and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and ex-BGCI US board of directors has been hard at work surveying our US members to find out what they want. Of course, it is always important to start any programme finding out what is actually needed, so it will be great for BGCI to use the results in developing the US project.

Of course, the US gang have produced loads of exciting resources, particularly for education, which we are reviewing and hope to work on. There is the Planet Plant website - for 8 -12 year olds, focusing on some of the charismatic flora of the US, curriculum materials for middle schools on plants and the Education e-update newsletter.

So far, we have been working with an on-line education network, called Grid Club, to develop Planet Plant into an international version. We have some plans through and will be looking for financial support. We are going to evaluate the curriculum materials (again, if we find the funds!), and make them accessible either to download or as hard copy (or both) for gardens to use and share with their local schools. Plus, we have given the Education e-update a bit of a make-over. Brian Johnson (used to be the US education officer, but now working hard on his PhD) is producing a monthly international Education e-update.

This electronic newsletter for garden educators is to share the latest in news and views from colleagues around the world, so make sure you subscribe, and view the latest issue on the BGCI website. Plus, we need your help - send us your news and we will include it in Education e-update.

Communication sensation

2007-05-11T15:49:00.000Z

This week, BGEN (Botanic Gardens Education Network - the UK network), sent out its first electronic newsletter, providing news, resources, details of events and general useful tidbits to its members. I know this because I put it together! Hopefully it will act as a good marketing tool to attract members to events and build a stronger community of educators in botanic gardens in the UK. For a sneaky peak, have a look at it on the BGEN website.

Not to be outdone, BGCI is also in the final stages of preparing its first international e-newsletter ' Education e-update'. This is being compiled by Brian Johnson, who used to be education officer in BGCI's US office and is now over in the UK working on a fabulous sounding PhD investigating the impact of environmental exposure on leadership in conservation. Anyway, it will be sent out to various BGCI networks very soon. As with nay newsletter, it can only be as good as its content - which means that our members have to get involved! So, if you have any ideas, stories, news or gossip (OK, maybe not gossip, we don't want any libel cases) do send them in to us - education@bgci.org.

This week I went to a training day on developing packs for family-led activities. I'm writing up the outcomes now and will make them available on the BGCI website soon. Talking of the website, it is now chock-a-block with articles from past issues of Roots, a rejuvenated resources section, links, websites, and how-to guides. Have a look for the improvements!

As always, comments and suggestions welcome. Have a great weekend
Sarah

Chinese take-away

2007-05-04T08:34:00.000Z

No, not one of those fast food jobs which taste great but are essentially bad for you. More a reflective process which was hard work and could be great for bg educators, producing conclusions from the congress. The BGCI team have made it home following the 3rd Global Botanic Gardens Congress in Wuhan, China. The congress had a huge number of people, as always I was so busy running around checking moderators, writing reports and getting over jet-lag I feel I didn't manage to speak to half the people I wanted to. Time takes on an interesting form in congresses too, the day one and two seem incredibly long, then before you know it, people are packing up and the congress is over.

The standard of presentations was very high this year and covered a huge range of fascinating topics. As always, the educators came out in force. Yong Shik Kim gave a fascinating introduction to the education programmes at Daegu Arboretum in Korea. Maite Delmas from the NHM in Paris outlined the role of this large institution in education with teacher training and comprehensive schools programme created by educators and researchers working together. Another session which stood out was 'Knowing your visitors - responding to needs'. Alaistair Griffiths from the Eden Project described the extent of Eden's visitor research programme, which examines visitor behaviour and learning outcomes and provides context for all of Eden's development work. Gert Ausloos and his team at National Botanic Garden, Belgium have been researching baseline knowledge and understanding of plants and the need for plant conservation among Belgians, with worrying results, and a clear indication of possible gaps in understanding that BGs can address.

It was also good to see some examples of research in botanic garden education that is currently taking place. Asimina Vergou, from Balkan Botanic Garden in Greece, is working on her PhD in schools programmes at RBG Kew, Wakehurst Place in the UK. She is investigating the learning that takes place through these programmes, for the children participants, the educator and the teachers, using interview and questionnaires with follow-up work. Her initial findings illustrate the complex interactions and outcomes from childrens' experiences within gardens and also have implications for the design and running of programmes. Ling Xu from Beijing University is the first person in China to study for a master's qualification in botanic garden education. Her dissertation findings also have useful potential application - looking at the attraction and holding patterns of different types of environmental imagery (naturalistic, aesthetic and environmental destruction).

Write ups on these sessions will be on the BGCI website shortly. In the meantime, details about the plenary speeches, the congress programme, abstracts and daily reports from the congress are available to download and use. The conclusions from the congress are of particular interest, especially those from 'Promoting education and awareness about plant diversity'. We collated and summarised the moderator's outputs from each of the education themed parallel sessions to produce an idea of the current situation, gaps and recommendations for how to move forward.

A massive thank you goes to all the congress contributors, presenters moderators and delegates, as well as the wonderful hosts, Wuhan Botanic Garden. Do let us know if you have any comments or suggestions on anything that has come out of the congress.

education for sustainable development - its not just a catchy title

2007-04-10T10:00:00.000Z

So, we're off to China, to learn, discuss, inspire and gossip....at the 3rd Global Botanic Gardens Congress.

Of course the congress is going to be more than gossiping with friends - the education dept have been set to work! We're running a day long session on education for sustainable development. Hopefully it will be interesting, as its such a varied subject, that some people find very hard to get their head around.

We've had the participants list through though, firstly, its a pretty big workshop, about 28 people, secondly, they are all amazing educators themselves who run some of the best botanic garden education programmes in the world. In fact, lets face it, a decent proportion of them, we were going to use their programmes as case studies for good ESD....

Nevertheless, we shall not be intimidated, we have a few tricks up our collective sleeves. What I find interesting about ESD is just how varied it is - taking in aspects of development education, environmental education, feminism, peace education, ecology , systems thinking, economics and design. It is so much more than learning to appreciate nature - although that is certainly a major part of it. It is recognising oneself within nature, as a portion of the ecosystem, as a biotic part of Gaia, interconnected with all others. Once we can see that our actions, our daily lives have an effect on everything else - we are the butterfly that flaps its wings in Brazil causing a monsoon in India, we can live in a way that reflects this.

So much of ESD is also about critical thinking - is this the best way to live my life, considering I am within this huge system?, is my government making the policy choices that I want them to?, does my botanic garden really contribute to sustainability or is it just lip service?; followed by empowerment - as a citizen of the world I am an individual but I can also make decisions that are important and will make a difference. These skills are also key to the democratic process as a whole, being able to question and also take action, and so are vital for everyone, any age, to have and use.

Our workshop will be looking at the different aspects of ESD, personal meanings, values and beliefs, but also the practical ways that garden education programmes can communicate with their audiences about some of the more abstract concepts. As with any part of CEPA (communication, education and public awareness) programmes, it is all about making it provocative, relevant and revealing new meaning to the audience.

Once we've run it, we will put the workshop on the BGCI website - I want to develop a larger area on the education website focused on ESD, so if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject, please let me know!

Oh, and if you are interested, the BGCI publication on Education for Sustainable Development: Guidelines for action in Botanic Gardens, is available to download.

Magnolias in danger

2007-04-10T09:42:00.000Z

Last Monday, BGCI ran an event, in association with Fauna and Flora International to celebrate the publication of the Magnoliaceae red list, basically containing details of the conservation status of the entire Magnolia family. As happens so often with these reports, the outlook identified seems gloomy - the Red List identifies 131 wild magnolias as being in danger of extinction, from a global total of 245 species.

However, at least now we have this data, we know what Magnolias we have, where they are and can now actually do something about it. Knowledge is power after all, and these data are still lacking for many plant families, now we know the story for Magnolia, the situation is clearer. As Sara O said, "There is a strong chance that these species will become extinct unless we take action now," the problems that they face, destruction of habitat and over-exploitation are not impossible to do something about.

The guest list was impressive - great and good from BGCI's board, professors of botany abounded, Fauna and Flora staff and various journos from the scary media world. Plus we had delicious cocktails - yum.

Oh, and vitally , we got some news coverage - to find out more, check out the reports on
BBC
New Scientist
Inthenews

So, though the news might be bleak, the outcome is positive - hopefully through collaborations and working together like this, botanic gardens can and are getting a better idea of what the situation is for plant conservation status and work with the public and governments to address the threats.

Fore more information about the report, and the downloadable red list, have a look at the BGCI website.

China congress here we come.....

2007-04-10T09:02:00.000Z

On Friday the BGCI office is pretty much decamping to Wuhan, China for the 3rd Global Botanic Gardens Congress. This is going to be a huge event, with over 600 delegates descending on the conference centre and the welcoming Wuhan Botanic Gardens, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

I'm really looking forward to it - Telka has done an amazing job organising it, and there are going to be some really interesting speakers - I'm particularly keen to hear David Bramwell, director of the Viera y Clavijo garden in the Canary Isles talking about botanic gardens and their role with addressing climate change, and to hear from many of the China speakers about the work being done to conserve China's incredibly diverse flora. Congresses are always great fun too - basically, you get to meet up with people you haven't seen for ages, cos they live the other side of the world, and have a good catch up. I get so excited hearing about everyone's projects, plans and programmes, it really gives a sense that plant conservation on a large scale is possible, and is happening, it is not just an abstract concept, but a real aim that is being achieved on a daily basis.

Some good friends of the education team are going to be there, so I can't wait to see them - Ling Xu came to the education congress and is studying for a masters in botanic garden education at Beijing University - the first person I think in China to do so, she'll be speaking on her research result's. Chris Dalzell from Durban Botanic Garden, the hosts for the 7th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens in 2009, will be talking about their education provision. Caroline Lewis from Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is presenting on their unique and innovative programme - the Fairchild challenge, which has appeared in a couple of issues of Roots. There is a big gang from SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute), which is excellent, their gardens are amazing, meeting the needs of the tourists who flock there, plus working with the surrounding communities to address the social and environmental problems that they face as part of their daily lives. So many people, I can't wait!

Anyway, I will be writing little daily reports on the congress, who's there, what is being said and what the feeling is, and any interesting tidbits I pick up. So keep your eyes peeled for all the latest from the congress, on the blog.

Green networking

2007-03-27T16:51:00.000Z

The other day, me and Julia went into sunny London town for an afternoon of interpretation. Malcolm Whitehead, head of learning at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Barnes, and friend of BGCI, was speaking about the need for interpretation and the pitfalls that face interpreters. he highlighted some of the crucial facts - and foibles about working with interpretation and learning "Could it be that educators are from Mars, curators are from Venus, but each thinks the other is from Uranus...."

The afternoon was set up by the London Parks and Greenspaces forum, with their biodiversity outreach group. I had not come across this network before, but there was a great turn out of people - colleagues from parks, the Environment Agency, museums, wildlife centres, access organisations, science centres and carious consultants and researchers. Speakers included people from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Royal Parks and the Sensory Trust.

The presentations were very interesting - the write up is on the BGCI website, but what I was also struck by was the networking. Participants had lunch and coffee together, and the session was followed by a trip to the pub, as it merged with the monthly social meeting of green networks in London, called Beeridiversional. This regular events sees professionals from all aspects of environmental work, ecological consultants, council conservation officers, recycling community workers, fisheries officers, environmental impact assessors, and of course educators from all over the place.

Beeridiversional is in addition to the other London networks - LEEF - London environmental educators forum, BGEN, Botanic Garden Education Network, various teachers groups, green groups and so on. Green networking is the way forward - to share ideas, contacts, experiences and develop partnerships. These days it is really easy to get involved with similar organisations, have a look at BGCI's website page on education links, which includes a section on networks and associations, for more ideas. Or, if there isn't one near you, set up your own - using the Yahoo groups. this is very easy to use - just go to the site, type in what you are looking for and away you go! Typing in 'environmental education' comes up with nearly 800 groups!

We are going to set up an international email 'list serve' for botanic garden educators (as requested from the education survey) in due course, and of course I'll let you know when that happens. Hopefully educators around the world will be able to use it to contact and query each other - using the best resource we have - the expertise of our members!

The tale of a true hummingbird

2007-02-09T13:04:00.000Z

Last night, BGCI hosted a talk by Professor Wangari Maathai, the women's rights campaigner, founder of the Green Belt Movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner - the first African woman to have been awarded this accolade. And well deserved this accolade is, she is an amazing woman, now in her late sixties, who inspired and motivated the audience at the Royal Geographical Society.

Professor Maathai is a consummate story-teller and throughout her speech I was amazed by the dedication and belief she has in the work she and her organisation are doing, the optimism she displays and the determination which has seen her through many difficult years as a woman's and environmental campaigner in Kenya.

She told us a story - a tale of a courageous hummingbird.

Watch the video on YouTube

The forest it lived in was burning down, the fire was raging through the trees and all the animals in the forest were fleeing for their lives. They stopped at the edge of the forest and watched their home being destroyed, crying and wailing about their misfortune. One tiny hummingbird saw what was happening to her home. So she went to a stream, collected a drop of water in her beak and carried it to the fire. Quick as she could she flew back to the stream and collected another drop, and took it to the fire, and another drop, and another. Quick as she could she collected water and took it to the fire.

The other animals watched her, and called to her 'Stop what you are doing, it is pointless, give up now, you will never be able to change anything, it is too late'. But she wouldn't listen, she kept on collecting drop after drop and taking her tiny amounts of water to the fire. Event eh elephants, with their big trunks, who could suck up a lot of water from the stream, said to her 'Stop this, there is no point, we are lost'. But she still wouldn't listen, and carried on zipping between the stream and the fire. A third time, the other animals watching said 'Don't continue, give up your work'. In between collecting drops of water she turned to them and said 'I may not be able to do very much, but I am trying my hardest - I am doing the very best that I can'.

Professor Maathai turned to the audience and addressed us all saying that we should also be like hummingbirds, it doesn't matter how small or insignificant we feel as individuals when thinking about environmental issues, we should just do the very best we can.

One of the campaigns the Green Belt Movement is involved with at the moment is the Billion Trees Campaign. Again, like the little hummingbird, the idea is that even if only 1 in 6 of us plants a tree, we can still between us all trying our best, plant a billion trees this year - thereby protecting watersheds, preserving soil and creating habitats for many different species.

So, go out today and plant a tree - just make sure you are doing the best you can!

Wise words from Wangari

2007-02-02T17:13:00.000Z

Things are hotting up in the office. We have an event next week at the rather gorgeous venue that is the Royal Geographical Society with the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Prof Wangari Maathai. We are all very excited about hearing the professor speak. She has a new book out, her autobiography, 'Unbowed' and has come to the UK for the launch. She kindly agreed to speak at a public lecture we have organised as she was unable to be a key note speaker at the education congress last September.

Professor Maathai is an amazing woman, she has worked in the conservation and environment field for many years, leading protests, setting up her NGO 'Green Belt Movement', working with communities, the poor, the oppressed, women's groups and so on, to create a better environment for all. Her work has brought her much acclaim and many accolades in recent years. I think her most powerful message is that one person, one individual, can make a difference to the world and to the environment around them. If we all adopted that attitude we could change the world over-night.

There are still tickets available to hear Prof Maathai speak - have a look on the BGCI website and join us next week
Thursday 8th February 2007
Royal Geographical Society
Doors open at 6.30 - lecture at 7.00

Running and the environment

2007-01-10T16:21:00.000Z

One of my New Years resolutions was to take up running again after doing some sort of damage to my knee. I duly decided to purchase some new trainers, a knee support and some dietary supplements for joints. So, off I went, to the shops to locate these products. Obviously, working for BGCI, I am concerned about the environment and try to minimise my ecological footprint as much as possible. There is still much for me to do on this - but I am being inspired by some friends who have started a 100-mile diet http://picklemyfancy.blogspot.com.

Anyway, dietary supplement for joint. In browsing the shelves of the local chemists I noticed that many contained fish oils - i.e. cod liver oil. I gave up eating cod a few years ago (I can't help but feel that environmentally speaking, it is akin to eating rhino or panda), and so see no reason why I should support the cod industry through a different supply route. Thus supplements are out of the window.

The new trainers situation of course is always potentially inflammatory - human rights abuses, carbon emissions of imports, economic crises brought on by purchase price and so on. I was relieved to discover New Balance trainers - made in England, and proud of it. Winners of the 2004 Queen's award for enterprise, they have been making trainers in the UK for 22 years. So far I have run about 30 miles in them, and they are jolly comfy - in fact I'm wearing them now. Plus they are a bit pink and shiny - always a bonus.

So, my conclusion is, so far, it is possible to add running to one of my low environmental impact activities - I run as part of my daily commute (by public transport for the rest of the way). In fact, knowing I need to go for a run definitely decreases the likelihood that (at 7.00 on a dark, cold, winter morning, while still under my duvet) I decide use my car to get to work instead - it's better all round.

Happy Christmas

2006-12-22T12:51:00.000Z

So, its the season of festivities and celebrations. Hooray, after the autumn the education department has had, it will be such a relief. First there was the education congress - which was excellent. Check out the reports on the BGCI website and the proceedings if you didn't get to it yourself. Then, there was the International Diploma course in education in botanic gardens - 13 participants from 12 countries. We went everywhere with them, Eden Project, Barnes Wetland Centre, Chelsea Physic Garden, even the Globe theatre.

In the middle of all that I has exams, modules on ecological management and sustainable development - approaches and indicators, for a post graduate certificate in sustainable development. This is a distance learning programme run by Imperial College, London. It ahas been really interesting studying for it - not only the subject, but also to understand how these distance learning courses go. Once a year in the post I receive a pack - a folder, a CD Rom, text books and further reading materials. My course I print out from the CD Rom (I can't read from computer screens, it bugs me) and away I go - 10 hours study per week for 30-odd weeks. I'm sure its more work than I ever did for my Master's degree - and its only a third of a Masters! Then in October I sit one 2-hour exam for each module. I just found out today, I have passed this year's modules- thank goodness!

Its interesting, as there are hundreds of us, studying the same topic, all over the world - but we never meet! There is an on-line discussion and study area, but it is under-used as a resource, I have been too scared to join in the discussions so far - even though I have questions on the materials too.

These are the kinds of things we will have to bear in mind if we decide to progress with the idea of developing a distance learning programme for environmental education - participants at the Education Congress were asked about it, and 70 % said they were interested. We will need a lot of work to develop this further, working in partnership with other capacity building organisation, maybe a university, maybe other botanic gardens, and definitely some funders! But it would be interesting to give it a go, and be more environmentally friendly than sending trainers overseas to run training courses.

What do you think? Would you be interested in participating in a distance learning programme examining environmental education - master planning, evaluation, theory, philosophy, practical aspects, everything you could need to set up your own education centre? What would you want to get out of it and how would you want it to look - on the internet, on CD Rom, on paper...the possibilities are vast!

In the meantime, have a great Christmas if you are celebrating and an engaging New Year. I'm off to the beautiful New Forest for some walking and feasting. Until 2007!

BGCI on Radio 4

2006-12-15T12:42:00.001Z

OK, so maybe it is not a whole programme on BGCI on the BBC's Radio 4, but hopefully we will get a mention. A friend of mine who has set up a fascinating system of individual carbon trading (called Carbon Limited) at the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) invited me to debate, hosted by Radio 4, about possible societal responses and solutions for addressing climate change. The programme airs 20.00, Wednesday 20th December - have a look at the website for more info.

The debate was simultaneously interesting and frustrating. The audience, made up of conservation professionals and other individuals with an interest in the environment and climate change, put forward many excellent questions, suggestions and ideas. Some members of the panel, I have to say, responded like true professionals - changing the subject, evading answers and providing rather convoluted answers. As well they might, climate change is a desperate issue - and one which has no simple solution. It requires a total rethink of country economics and industrial development. With their huge visitor numbers and influential position within policy making, botanic gardens certainly have a vital role to play in both the climate change debate and in finding solutions.

As for BGCI's contribution - I asked a question to the panel about the role of hydroelectric power schemes as an 'alternative' energy source, as it is being promoted as a 'green' alternative to burning fossil fuels. However, the environmental damage that can be caused by hydroelectric schemes (not all by any stretch of the imagination, but particularity the large, hard engineering works) is enormous. When these schemes include flooding areas of vegetated land, the rotting plants produce vast quantities of methane (20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). An excellent book about the impacts of hydroelectric power is Silenced Rivers - the ecology and politics of large dams.

Anyway, I am sure my question will be cut out of the programme - it was impressively dismissed by the respondent. We must of course look at alternative energy sources and invest in research to minimise carbon production - but neither should we adopt alternatives without examining and questioning their impacts in the same way as we have done for fossil fuel power stations. I would love to hear your views on the subject....do send in your comments.

Reasons to blog!

2006-12-15T12:04:00.000Z

So, why exactly have the 'not so good at technology' education department decided to enter the weird and wonderful world of blogs? Well, from my own point of view, Sarah Dixon (BGCI's invaluable web editor) and I went to a training course by the brilliant Media Trust a couple of weeks ago that opened my eyes to the new communication tool that is 'New Media' - i.e. using blogs, Wikis (as in Wikipedia), Myspace, Podcasts and so on.

The Media Trust is a fab organisation - they are funded by the UK government and their remit is to provide training, expertise and resources to help charities use the media for their own benefit. They run training courses (very reasonably priced and sometimes free!), help locate media experts who will donate their time to work on a charity's particular media project, and will even take news, turn it into a press release and release it to the news feeds journalists use to locate stories. Have a look at their website to find out more.

Anyway, Paul Caplan, one of the tutors on this training day, was telling us about the possibilities of using new media - his point was that it opened the door to a totally different way of working. Rather than websites being places to get information from, a very didactic approach, we can use them to communicate, to create dialogue and conversation with individuals, sharing ideas and experiences in a much more open and democratic way. I'll write up some of the notes he gave us and put them on the website - of course I'll drop a blog in to say where they are. He also has articles available on the ICT Hub about new media and various other IT technologies.

In the meantime, the training session has directly led to this blog. Julia and I are always working on developing new projects and proposals and are always looking for input and ideas from our colleagues and friends - this blog, where anyone can leave a comment and contribute, ill hopefully provide us with a better way of communicating and learning from everyone.

We'll use it to share tidbits we pick up from various places, chat about ideas or suggestions, draw attention to new resources or outputs from BGCI and also to get to know the BGCI education website users a little better. So don't be shy - contribute, comment, get involved, we'd love to hear from you!

Welcome!

2006-12-08T16:29:00.000Z

Hello. Great you're reading our first blog. We've set up this blog to talk about education, the environment, plants, the universe... oh yes, and botanic gardens.

We've just run a fantastic education congress in Oxford. Just look how many people turned up!