6 minute read
Pollinating great ideas - Hidden assets
Lorraine Perrins, former staff member and current volunteer, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
Botanic garden nurseries have been referred to as the ‘engine room of everything’ (BGCI, 2022), highlighting the fundamental contribution they provide to botanic gardens’ operations. Having spent the bulk of my career working in botanic garden nurseries, I wholeheartedly agree.
As the world grapples with the continuing loss of plant diversity, we are witnessing an increasing demand for botanic gardens to rapidly expand their commitment and capacity to mitigate this loss. The investment in building a global network of botanic garden seed banks has resulted in significantly more threatened species being conserved as ex situ insurance against extinction. This has led to many botanic garden nurseries actively participating in what is conventionally termed ‘conservation horticulture’, for example, supporting seed banks by growing threatened plants in seed production areas/orchards to increase quantities of seed that can be harvested from difficult to access species. It has also led to increasing requests to grow species for reintroduction or translocation programs, as organisations managing these projects appreciate the specialist skills required to grow species new to cultivation.
The investment in building a global network of botanic garden seed banks has resulted in significantly more threatened species being conserved as ex situ insurance against extinction.
Author, botanist and previous Director and Chief Executive of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV), Dr Tim Entwisle, likened conservation horticulture to intensive care units when describing the response by the RBGV ‘Plant Rescue and Care Unit’ to the 2019–2020 catastrophic bushfires (Entwisle, 2023), and I would broaden that analogy. Botanic garden nurseries and seed banks are akin to entire hospitals, providing care services for threatened flora by way of emergency intervention and triage; plant paediatrics; incubation spaces for identifying future research opportunities; as well as palliative/aged care of exceptional plant species. Only when considered in this way can the variety of skills, expertise and resources required to maintain the ‘engine room/hospital’ be fully appreciated.
Botanic garden ex situ collections are often located away from publicly accessed areas, usually to mitigate potential biosecurity and theft risks, but also because they are primarily insurance collections and are not being grown for display. Packets of seed in a freezer are not particularly engaging, likewise monocultured blocks of one species grown for seed harvest usually lack an attractive horticultural aesthetic. The value of these ‘hidden assets’ cannot be underestimated; however, they suffer from being ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and are often overlooked in attracting adequate resourcing. Many suffer boom and bust cycles of infrastructure maintenance and investment, compounded by competing demands for nursery space and resources from non‑conservation programs.
I would also argue that it is not only the threatened plant collections held within these facilities that are priceless. The dedicated, highly skilled professionals who care for them are also often overlooked, hidden assets. These horticulturists face many challenges when determining the germination or cultivation requirements of individual species, usually being grown outside their natural range. Other drawbacks in growing monospecific stands of species as seed orchards are the increased risk of pest and disease attack; the required suite of pollinators may not be present; and risks associated with pollen cross‑contamination. Being able to navigate these issues and remedy them effectively is critical, but not always easy.
Diligent record keeping is paramount for all ex situ collections to identify and track individual progeny and ensure genetic diversity is maintained over time. Inadequate standards will compromise the conservation value of the collections. An absence of skilled staff managing these collections can result in impoverished collections primarily consisting of horticulturally robust and ornamental species. Investment must be made to attract, train and retain staff to build the depth of knowledge critical to ensuring conservation programs are successful.
A hidden asset is an asset that is not stated or is understated. The economic value of most botanic gardens is often quantified by the number of visitors they attract via recreational tourism. What if botanic gardens were also to provide a measure of the impact their seed banks and nurseries contribute regarding practical conservation activities and our understanding of plant science?
By documenting, and importantly publicly reporting, how collections are used by third parties, a bigger picture of the importance of the critical services and resources that botanic gardens provide can be emphasised and understood, both within the organisation but also among potential funders and the broader community. Some larger botanic gardens do highlight the use of their collections in annual reports but often this information can be overshadowed by events or other activities. I would argue that the use of collections in our understanding of plant diversity and its conservation into the future needs to be proclaimed at every opportunity.
It has been stated that ‘Gardens have the expertise, tools, facilities, and networks in place to be the strongest force for plant conservation – they just need the resources to match the global need’ (Westwood et al., 2021). Understating the importance of these ex situ collections and the experts who maintain them de values our institutions. By simply adjusting our approach to highlight the critical contributions that our seedbanks and nurseries provide to conservation horticulture, we can ensure that they no longer remain ‘hidden assets’.
Further reading
Botanic Gardens Conservation International. (2022). 7th Global Botanic Gardens Congress Final Conclusions. (2022). https://www.bgci.org/wp/wp content/uploads/2022/10/7GBGC Final Conclusions 2.pdf
Entwisle, T. (2023). Guest essay Vive l’horticulture de conservation. Sibbaldia: The International Journal of Botanic Garden Horticulture, (22). https://doi.org/10.24823/Sibbaldia.2022.1997
Westwood, M, Cavender, N, Meyer, A, et al. (2021). Botanic garden solutions to the plant extinction crisis. Plants, People, Planet, 3(1), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10134
