The Botanic Garden: The World’s Greatest Botanical Sanctuaries by Ambra Edwards Frances Lincoln, £30, ISBN 978-0711282261
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The Botanic Garden is the latest offering from award-winning writer and garden historian Ambra Edwards and – like all her books – it does not disappoint. Blending history, science, plants and people, it is both absorbing and instructive. Despite its large format and lavish production, this engrossing book is more than a beautiful, coffee-table tour of the world’s most amazing botanical gardens. Edwards delves into their diverse histories and various uses – as medicinal hotbeds, botanical training grounds, living cabinets of curiosities and agents of Empire.
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If you were expecting a purely historical account, you may be surprised to learn about the vital role botanical gardens play today, not just individually but together as a global network of shared materials, knowledge and research. Forty per cent of the world’s plant species are threatened with extinction and the combined work of our botanic gardens is crucial to their survival. As Edwards explains, these gardens were never simply places of horticultural escape and plant theatre; they have always served a higher purpose and their role today is critical.
The Botanic Garden reveals just how vital these gardens’ work is – from running conservation projects in some of the world’s most fragile biodiversity hotspots to looking after bomb-proof seed banks, helping preserve local flora and testing plants’ climatic tolerances in light of the changing climate. Learn how botanic gardens are embracing new research and technologies and even making an impact beyond their perceived remit. They are, for instance, playing a role in the field of biomimetics, helping mathematicians and physicists solve engineering problems.
This book will educate and delight and may even inspire you to join in the work of these organisations
All these areas, and many more, are illustrated with detailed examples of positive impact, both on a local and global level. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has brought alpine sow thistles (Cicerbita alpina) back from the verge of extinction in the Cairngorms National Park. Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank has helped restock Australia’s forests after the catastrophic fires of 2019-20. Nong Nooch Tropical Garden in Thailand propagates some of the world’s rarest and most difficult plants, sharing them with other gardens and specialists throughout the world. This spirit of reciprocity and collaboration is truly heartening, especially for anyone suffering from eco-anxiety.
After a fascinating introduction on the evolution of botanic gardens, Edwards offers us enlightening features on 27 individual gardens. These are as diverse as they are fascinating – from some of the oldest at Padua, Leiden and Oxford, to some of the largest, including Kew, and newest, such as Australia’s Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne. All are generously illustrated with vibrant photography, mixing wanderlust-inducing vistas and astonishing plant close-ups. Captions are clear and knowledgeable; the page design is clean and elegant.
As you read, a picture comes through of incredible variety. We travel to Tromsø Arctic-Alpine Botanical Garden, which harbours plants from some of the world’s harshest environments; Sichtungsgarten Weihenstephan in Germany, whose research into plant communities is inspiring contemporary garden design; the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii that is leading the way in ethnobotany; and China’s Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, which holds the world’s largest collection of wild edible plants and undertakes vital experiments in agroforestry.
Edwards does not shy away from illustrating the questionable histories of some of these institutions. She shows how they are addressing their pasts and acknowledging neglected collaborators while also using their spaces, collections, staff and collective power to engage people as far and wide as possible and help shape global nature strategies. This timely book will educate and delight and may even inspire you to join in the work of these all-important organisations.
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