News published: 02 May 2025

In Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens previous Horticulture Forum, Sam Brockington of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden gave an excellent overview of the study recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, “Insights from a century of data reveal global trends in ex situ living plant collections”.

This study creates a ‘metacollection’ out of the accession records of 50 botanic gardens from around the world, and analyses trends in that collection over 100 years, such as proportions of wild-sourced to garden-sourced material, quantity of rare and threatened species, the effect of international legislation and many other fascinating and thought-provoking insights. It is a brilliant paper and a must-read for anyone and everyone in the botanic garden world.

Sam’s presentation was followed by a great discussion around the implications of this study and what they meant for botanic gardens. This conversation was so involved that every wanted to continue it, and so the CCABG will be hosting two open discussion sessions focused on this study.

Date & Time: Wednesday 7 May 0500 AEST / Tuesday 6 May 1400 CDT / Tuesday 6 May 2000 BST

Date & Time: Tuesday 13 May 1000 AEST / Monday 12 May 1700 PDT / Monday 12 May 2100 ART

These sessions will be a conversation open for everyone to join. Reading the paper is recommended whether or not you attend. It really is that good. Yes, really.

Share this with your friends, colleagues and staff. The more the merrier.