Project Update

A big part of the Glasshouse Restoration project is getting lots more people to enjoy our glasshouses. We really want young people to visit the glasshouses and the Garden. This is why over the next two years we will be doing lots of activities for them. This month we were very excited to work with young people on our Plants have Secrets: digital youth project.

When we fix our fernery (a special greenhouse that is perfect for ferns to live in) we will need to take all the plants out of it. Before we do this we need to make sure we know exactly what we have inside it, so that we can put the right things back. We call this a plant audit.

Before we repair our glasshouses we want to make sure there are plants to put in them when they are fixed. Not all the big plants will live when we move them. It will be hard to keep plants that are planted terrestrially (planted in the ground, not in pots) alive. We have taken cuttings from these plants and are growing clones of them. This is a process called propagation. By cloning these plants we keep their DNA. They might be a little smaller, but they are still the same plant.

As part of the Cool Fernery restoration, we have started to decant some of the larger of the 400 plants, having already propagated 30 specimens to protect against plant loss.