HORTICULTURE
The Gardens’ Living Collection is one of the world’s best ex situ plant conservation resources
pineapples, coffee, cotton, sugar cane and sorghum. Each botanic garden across the globe is part of an international network of plant material holding genetic diversity of immense conservation value. Many species are now only alive on the planet due to the presence in botanic gardens of individual specimens that no longer exist in the wild. Given the criticality of living collections it is imperative that a Living Collections Policy and Strategy exists for every botanic garden. The last time our organisation reviewed its policy as w 802ni andacoemtn poar r sty at r egy is needed to govern the development, management, direction, protection and enhancement of the Living Collection. To accelerate the Living Collections Policy and Strategy development, I recently appointed Dr Lucy Sutherland as a strategic consultant. Dr Sutherland is an Honorary Professor at the University of Adelaide and was previously the Director of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium in South Australia, as well as acting director of the Australian National Botanic Gardens and the national co-ordinator of the Australian Seed Bank
Partnership. In addition, she has just been appointed as the new Director of the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Dr Sutherland is now leading an extensive consultation process across all facets of our organisation. It is fundamental to the success of any strategy that all streams of our organisation support and leverage the Living Collection – be it our science team integrating research, taxonomy or disease diagnostics, our asset team providing critical infrastructure such as irrigation, our education team engaging visitors, or our venues team activating our botanic landscapes. It is, however, our horticulturists that continue to nurture and sustain an ever-growing and at-risk Collection of diversity. Our three botanic gardens and the Domain are collectively a living
‘Our collection is used to improve outcomes for humanity and the environment’
laboratory of documented, known provenanced species that are actively researched by our own teams of horticulturists and scientists as well as experts across the globe. Our Collection is used to improve outcomes for humanity and the environment including restoring biodiversity through restoration and translocation or through the production of therapeutic medicines. In the last few years alone our Living Collection has actively contributed to biosecurity surveillance, plant breeding (helping make Blueberries blue both on the inside and outside), COVID vaccine research, identification fchemicalcompounds and research trials of natural herbicides or myrtle rust resistance trials. Spread across almost 750 hectares and three climatically and ecologically diverse landscapes, the Australian Institute of Botanical Science’s Living Collection comprises a staggering 17,000 taxa of living plants. The Institute’s Living Collection also includes all three of our Gardens’ conservation nurseries, where thousands of species are growing at any given time, as well THE GARDENS SPRING 2022 25