When my children were very small, we often went to Kew for a fun day out, delighting in 300 acres of spectacular garden packed with surprises. But in the decades that have followed, botanic gardens have entirely reinvented themselves. While they have always existed for the purposes of education, and been enjoyed as places of beauty and recreation, today’s botanic gardens have a new and urgent mission: to save the plant kingdom - or as much of it as they can - from extinction. We can no longer see them simply as superior public parks. Today, instead, they stand in the front line in defence of the plant kingdom. 

 

During our lifetimes, the state of the global environment has changed more rapidly than at any previous period in human history.  The figures are terrifying: two in every five of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction. Yet botanists have been telling us for decades that plants provide the basic life support systems on which all life on earth depends. 

 

Circling the globe from urban oases in the world’s great cities to remote montane forest and tropical jungle, this book presents the world’s most remarkable botanic gardens in all their richness and variety, but united in their mission to safeguard biodiversity and remind us all of the beauty and wonder of plants.

 

Discover the histories of these astonishing gardens, with their precious collections of some of the world’s most rare and endangered life forms; explore fragile and unfamiliar landscapes from scorching deserts to Arctic snows; marvel at breath-taking horticulture, and learn about the ground-breaking science today’s botanists are employing in their bid to secure the future of the planet. 

 

It has become fashionable to decry botanic gardens as bastions of imperialism. This book tells another story - of gardens engaged in protecting the disappearing araucaria forest, or combatting raging wildfires, or harnessing algae to mitigate pollution… of gardens joining together to combat biodiversity collapse and safeguard the future for us all.