A botanical garden
According to the definition of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) in the International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation (IABGC) (2000), “botanic gardens are institutions holding documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education.”
A botanical garden must be a public institution committed to long-term maintenance of its collections.
A private garden, even if it is open to the public, is not generally considered a botanical garden, as this commitment is not certain and the garden’s vocation may change radically if the owner changes.
Even if it is public, it is in a garden’s best interest to have a clear mission and specific development plan to guide its administrators, whoever they may be.
Botanical gardens should always have complete documentation of their collections, control over plants collected and demonstrate responsible management of their collections.
Well documented collections allow botanical gardens to support botanists and other scientists by providing documentation and resources for research.
Botanical gardens have three main objectives:
- The first and best known objective is recreation. Exhibitions, plant sales, picnics under the trees and relaxing in a natural environment are some of the possibilities that botanical gardens offer both residents and tourists.
- The second very important objective of botanical gardens is education. This includes summer camps for kids, school group tours, interpretation, classes and seminars as well as publications and other ways of sharing information between botanical gardens and horticulture and botany professionals.
- Finally, gardens have a scientific objective. Gardens have always studied botany, taxonomy and systematics. Today, fields of study are even broader, from molecular research in the lab to ecological field woork. Conservation and studies of local plants should also be emphasized.
Certain institutions are called botanical gardens for historical reasons and their objectives are mainly recreational, but there are also many gardens that are currently reviewing their mission and becoming gardens that are active in education, research and conservation.
We use the term "botanical garden” inclusively to mean arboretums and any other garden that specializes in growing a specific type of plant.
Why work with conservation in botanical gardens?
Long before the term “biodiversity” was used, botanical gardens carried out activities that are now associated with biodiversity.
They took part in describing new species and studies about them to discover potential uses in industry, horticulture or for research.
Gardens also conserved species of rare wild plants (or ex situ conservation, meaning outside of the species’ natural habitat).
Gardens’ plant collections are certainly reference collections of choice because of their diversity (more than 80,000 species are represented in collections of botanical gardens all over the world – nearly a third of all known plant species) and because of their related documentation.
Over time, they have become indispensable databases for taxonomy and studying biodiversity. In fact, the first biodiversity database was published by a botanical garden.
The Index Kewensis, a list of vascular plants first published in 1890, is based on the herbarium of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, UK. The Index has become a directory of all named plants and is available online as the International Plant Names Index (IPNI).
Documentation in botanical gardens includes more than information about species diversity. It also contains information about the environment, ecological systems and their sustainability. All of this knowledge contributes to botanical and horticultural research and helps to put biodiversity conventions in place.
It is important to remember that in some countries, botanical gardens are the first, and sometimes the only institutions involved in researching, collecting, managing and conserving rare plant species in their region as well as species of interest for food, agriculture or other economic applicability.
Botanical gardens were among the first institutions to study biodiversity. Through the sum of knowledge and expertise that they have accumulated, they are leaders in research on both wild and cultivated plants and conservation. Many new gardens have opened with the objective to be centres for education, conservation and plant research, especially species indigenous to their region.
How can a botanical garden work to conserve biodiversity?
One of the most important roles that botanical gardens play in conservation is environmental education. Each year, more than 150 million people visit gardens all over the world and have the chance to get in touch with nature. Botanical gardens are a unique environment to raise public awareness and help people understand the importance of biodiversity, educate people about the threats it currently faces and make them realize that nature conservation is everyone’s job. This is why it is so important for gardens to maintain interpretation programs, host school groups and present exhibitions.
The second obvious role of botanical gardens in biodiversity conservation is ex situ conservation. Ex situ conservation (growing wild plants outside their natural environment) has many advantages, but should not be seen as an objective in and of itself. It is one element of a comprehensive strategy to conserve species in their environment. Ex situ conservation helps to attain this objective by providing material to reintroduce plants into degraded areas or to reinforce existing populations.
It also helps to remove wild populations from the pressure of scientists, horticulturists or collectors. The presence of a rare species in a botanical garden makes it available for scientific research, education and possible horticultural or commercial exploitation without affecting wild populations. Ex situ conservation can also serve as an “insurance policy” for endangered species by creating a protected reserve of especially vulnerable native species or populations. It can even be the only solution if the natural habitat has been destroyed or if a species disappears. Botanical gardens are ideal places to practice ex situ conservation because they have appropriate facilities and skilled horticulturists and botanists. Ex situ conservation includes not only the cultivation of plants in gardens and greenhouses, but also maintenance of seed, pollen or propagule samples and in vitro cell and tissue cultures.
One of a botanical garden’s primary conservation objectives can be working to conserve local flora, from scientific research to collaboration with towns, cities and local organizations to conserve or restore habitats. The collaboration of gardens with other organizations plays an important role in the implementation of natural or regional conservation plants. Gardens can provide the expert advice, practical assistance, databases and information needed to manage plants with a view to their conservation and sustainable use.
To meet these objectives, a thorough knowledge of biodiversity is necessary. Since they were founded, botanical gardens have been involved in the documentation of wild and garden plants all over the world. More and more, this role has expanded into research in order to find out more about the ecosystems that plant species live in as well as the plants themselves. Botanical gardens are an ideal environment for research because their collections and libraries already have resource documents, and equipment such as laboratories, greenhouses, growing rooms, herbariums and data management systems is already available on site.