U.K. arboretums offer specialized education programs

The role of arboretums and botanical gardens has altered. Until recently, arboretums have combined display, collection, research and education.

Botanical gardens in foreign countries have put much importance on educational programs, developing them not only for ordinary visitors, but also for experts.

Education is one of the important roles arboretums play, teaching people the relationships between plants and humans. It also helps arboretums preserve endangered plants. Moreover, people can learn how to reduce the environmental impact they have.

The United States and Britain have the best-developed educational programs for would-be experts working at arboretums. This effort to foster specialists has been a driving force for arboretums to strengthen their competitiveness in the future.

Britain’s Royal Horticulture Society and Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew have attracted worldwide fame for their educational programs with abundant historical content. A number of those who finish the courses there have gone on to work as curators, gardeners and heads of arboretums across the world.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have been operating training sessions for experts and educational programs for young people and ordinary citizens.

In particular, the three-year Kew Diploma course provides studies on plant taxonomy, ecology and genetics. In addition, all trainees participating in the course work are sent to a plant collection department in the organization and have to work with garden staff for nine months to obtain knowledge through on-site practice.

The program offered by the Royal Horticultural Society is mainly for training gardeners. Since the organization established a horticulture school in 1907, the society has produced a number of specialists, many of whom have important roles in the world’s major arboretums and botanical gardens.

It operates a one-year course on technologies in the field of specialized botanical gardens. It also provides a two-year course in cooperation with colleges. Participants in the programs can even learn how to build arboretums and operate them.

The continued management of an arboretum is as important as building it. But unfortunately, Korea lacks professional human resources for such tasks, let alone organizations that can foster such experts.

Currently, the private Cheollipo Arboretum in South Chungcheong Province operates a similar training program. But it focuses on practice rather than education on professional field knowledge.

Industry observers say that fostering professionals in the field of arboretums is key to the nation’s development in forestry. They argue that the government should now develop a systematic education program to nurture specialists.

By Lee Kwon-hyung (kwonhl@heraldcorp.com)

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew

― Location: Richmond, Surrey

― Size: 120 hectares, with 56 exhibitions and conservatories and more than 25,000 different kinds of plants

― Opening times: The gardens are open 9:30 a.m. daily, except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

― History:

― The gardens were created in 1759 in Kew Park by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales.

― Much of the collection from around the world was added to Kew by Sir Joseph Banks and the garden was publicized in 1840.

― Main attractions: Palm House, Alpine House, Temperate House, museums, galleries and historic buildings, Kid’s Kew, etc.

― What’s special at Kew Gardens:

― An enormous variety of plants that can grow in temperate climates

― The conservatory architecture varies from typical Victorian glasshouses to modern styles

― The facilities and inside composition of conservatories follows a very traditional approach.

Key attractions

― The Palm House, located in the central glasshouse, is the world’s largest glass conservatory. It is 110 meters long.

― Recently, Evolution House has been added, showing customers how plants and the Earth evolved up to the present day.

― Kew Gardens is open year round, but it is especially popular in May and June, this is because almost every glasshouse is open to the public, unlike other seasons.

― Rhododendron Dell was carved out of the Thames flood plain by Lancelot “Capability” Brown. Rhododendron Dell is one of Kew’s most-visited single plantings and there are over 700 specimens planted in the Dell, with some unique hybrids found only here.

― The Rock Garden, which is situated next to the Prince of Wales Conservatory, exhibits alpine plants. Artificial streams and a waterfall provide ideal conditions for alpine plants.

― The Order Beds are often called plant family beds because they group together plants that are closely related and these plant families are themselves grouped into orders. By arranging plants according to their relationships with each other, they help customers understand how plants are related.

Organization and staff

― There are three big departments operating in Kew Gardens ― the Living Collections Department, the Information and Exhibitions Division and the Herbarium & Library Division. About 800 people are employed at Kew, plus a large group of honorary research fellows and associates.