The Plant Doctor in good company at the LANDSCAPE Show Olympia London

In a recent Telegraph Magazine an interview was published with Dr Paul Smith of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, a project of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Smith confirmed that the Seed Bank located at Wakehurst in West Sussex is an ‘insurance policy’ against wild plant extinction.  Their aim is to store 25% of seeds from the world’s plant species by 2020.

They focus on plants that have a known use, such as the wild relatives of crops, as well as rare or endangered species.  At Wakehurst there is also a ‘vast underground nuclear-fallout-proof storage vault (a series of deep freezes in effect)’ where seeds are stored at -20 °C’; this means most could survive for hundreds of years.

Fascinated?  Well you can catch Smith presenting a seminar at the LANDSCAPE Show at 9.30 on Wednesday 13th April.

For details of the many other seminars including gardenerstalk’s own Plant Doctor speaking about garden layout and design taking into consideration the existing and future ecology of the site;
the editor of Horticulture Week leading a panel discussion, or Craig Knight of PRISM talking about the lean office and how plants, art and empowerment can lead to better productivity, checkout the seminars pages on the LANDSCAPE Show website.

The LANDSCAPE Show is organised in partnership with eFIG, the European Federation of Interior Planting Groups.