4. Healthy Food Partnership, Columbia Valley Botanical Gardens & Centre for Sustainable Living

Columbia Valley Botanical Gardens & Centre for Sustainable Living and David Thompson Secondary School (Invermere, BC) are joining efforts over the next three years to construct and operate a greenhouse on the school grounds.

This leading edge greenhouse will employ the latest design and energy conservation techniques in the production of organic food. The food, in turn, will be used in the school’s Chef Training and Career Development programs.

“We see students learning to grow and use healthy foods through this facility and develop life skills that will assist them in all aspects of their lives and professional aspirations from horticulture, sustainable design and construction and entrepreneurship to name just a few examples”, says Alison Bell, teacher and Chef Training Programme Director at DTSS.

“The Healthy Food Project Greenhouse fits beautifully with our aims as an organisation” says Maureen Thorpe, CVBG Chair. “Plant conservation, organic horticulture, integration with community groups, engaging youth in meaningful, applied projects, enhancing and highlighting community food security issues – these are at the forefront of our work as a Botanic Garden and Centre for Sustainable Living.”

For more information call (604) 342-0539.

5. Education for Sustainable Development: Guidelines for Action in Botanic Gardens, Julia Willison, Botanic Gardens Conservation International

Botanic gardens have always been important centres for environmental education and in recent years there has been a growing interest in education for sustainable development (ESD) amongst botanic garden educators. As a holistic process, ESD attempts to represent the complex and dynamic relationships between the natural and social sciences thus providing a means of addressing current environmental and development issues.

BGCI has produced these Guidelines to support botanic gardens in developing and implementing ESD strategies. The Guidelines provide a rationale for why botanic gardens need to be involved in ESD, highlighting the importance of botanic garden education in implementing sustainable development initiatives and offering a range of ideas for educational approaches.

Read more and download a copy of the Guidelines: http://www.bgci.org/education/
ESD_Guidelines.

6. Plant Search – Searching for plant records, Sarah Dixon, Botanic Gardens Conservation International

BGCI’s living collections database, aka the Plant Search (www.bgci.org/plant_search.php), is growing all the time. At the moment about a quarter of the world's living collections are included but we urgently need to improve it so conservationists can respond rapidly to climate change and other pressing threats.

If you work with a living collection, you can upload your data and then use our system to analyse your collection for rare plants, crop wild relatives, images, and much more. It's also a great way to help your country meet it's conservation commitments - it's a direct contribution to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

Contact us now to find out how to share your list and help the world save plant diversity: info@bgci.org

7. Botanical Education in rural Jamaica – A Canadian’s Perspective, Matthew Wheeler, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) & Canadian Urban Institute

Editor’s note: Matthew has a combined interest in botany, education and botanical gardens and recently joined BGCI. While the experience he recounts below is not a collaboration with a botanical garden, I thought subscribers to the email would be interested in the important educational role of his internship.

In recent years, declining sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) production devastated the livelihood of many Jamaican farmers. In order to increase crop yields without using additional fertilisers or pesticides, a local potato grower’s cooperative decided to build a tissue culture lab to provide virus-free planting materials to farmers.

Last winter I accepted an internship with the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Urban Institute to help. I spent five months in rural Jamaica converting an office building into a laboratory, building a greenhouse, designing and directing research projects, initiating a unique sweet potato cultivar into culture, and training Jamaican staff to operate the facility.

Informally, I also educated local farmers about the benefits of the using plants grown from tissue culture. Many of the farmers lacked a formal education, therefore explaining about viruses and their modes of transmission was always an interesting challenge. Most of the information was passed orally and each encounter typically brought me as much information as I disseminated.

It was rewarding to support a grass roots movement that will directly benefit local people. I now have a renewed interest in pursuing a career in education and applying myself to Canadian botanical conservation and biodiversity awareness.

8. One Planet, Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, United Nations Environment Programme

A comprehensive, visual presentation of scientifically verifiable information about changes in the global environment can now be downloaded free of charge at www.na.unep.net/OnePlanetManyPeople/powerpoints.html.

This presentation of environmental hotspots and issues is based primarily on satellite imagery taken over 30 years showing how human actions and geophysical activities have changed various parts of the world. Examples include the shrinking ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers, growth of cities like Las Vegas, forest loss in the Amazon, and the decline of the Aral Sea and Lake Chad.

Setting up and Running a School Garden. A manual for teachers, parents and communities, Published by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, www.fao.org

At a time when schools in the West are scrutinized to ensure they provide children with healthy food, this publication from the Food and Agricultural Organisation tackles the issue on a global scale. The authors argue that childhood habits die hard, and that education about nutrition must begin at an early age. Encouraging ‘learning by doing’, the guide explains how to run and set up a garden as a school project.

The experience of creating a garden will give children between the ages of 9-14 skills about social and physical wellbeing and a better understanding of the natural world. The manual provides assistance to teachers, parents and communities, drawing on classroom experiences from across the world. Tips include deciding what will be needed, how big the garden will be, how much time it will take, and how to look after 'sick' plants. The guide even tackles more complicated topics like integrated pest management and crop rotation, in a detailed section of notes and fact sheets at the back.

Plantlives.com: An Online Resource for Plant Biographies

www.plantlives.com offers an unusual and fascinating perspective showing that like animals, plants can be said to have individual personalities too. The individual Biographies of over 3000 species (primarily higher plants but also a few seaweeds, lichens, fungi, etc. from all over the world) are rigorously researched. Once registered you are able to view some sample Biographies; as a subscriber to this website you can search and view, or download, all available Biographies. Registration is free, however, there is a fee for becoming a full subscriber.