5th Global Botanic Gardens Congress

Dear Cultivator,

It is hard to believe we are already two months into 2013. We hope the year has started well for you.
Here in BGCI we have a busy year ahead of us. Of course our main focus will be on the 5th Global Botanic Gardens Congress (www.5GBGC.com) for which we have already received a lot of interest from around the world. It is not too late to submit proposals for presentations and symposia – but please do so soon as the deadline is fast approaching (22nd March 2013).
Our work on tree Red Listing will continue in 2013 – with a publication planned on Andean montane forest trees and a new focus on Betula. The work on birches will take as its taxonomic baseline the forthcoming Botanical Magazine Monograph: "The Genus Betula - A taxonomic revision of birches" by Kenneth Ashburner and Hugh A. McAllister due for publication by Kew in March 2013.
We will continue to develop the Ecological Restoration Alliance of botanic gardens that was launched in 2012 and we are working with an award winning photographer Barney Wilczak to document ecological restoration activities around the world.
On the education side, we hope you have already seen our exciting new animation on how botanic gardens are becoming more socially aware – if not, do take a look now (www.bgci.org) – and we are busy preparing for a conference on inquiry-based science education that will be held here at Kew on 9-10 July 2013.

We provide an overview of our latest news below. Please do keep check our website regularly for updated information – or alternatively, you can follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bgci and https://twitter.com/BGCIeducation.