ABSTRACT. Botanic gardens, as collections-based centres of excellence and expertise in horticulture, systematics and science education, are vital for delivering the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and a host of other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). Botanic garden horticulturists have the ability to secure seeds, cuttings and other living material from the full spectrum of wild and domesticated plant diversity and to bring plants successfully into cultivation, often for the first time. Taxonomic and systematic experts are the gatekeepers to plant diversity, enabling us to define and differentiate between the enormous diversity of plants which provide the foundation of ecosystems around the world. Through their public education, citizen science and outreach programmes, botanic gardens can engage wider society to build support and mobilise resources for the MEAs. Thus, botanic gardens, with their well-documented and highly diverse living collections, have an essential role in the UN Decade on Ecological Restoration. Europe, with its wealth of recent and long-established botanic gardens, has enormous potential for leadership in ecological restoration and abundant opportunities to deliver benefits for biodiversity, climate change and the quality of life in the future. I will offer a personal perspective on the prospects and priorities for ecological restoration efforts in botanic gardens emphasising the importance and value for the future of every kind of plant and every environmental setting. My principle conclusion is that botanic gardens should see ecological restoration as the ultimate purpose of their collections and their conservation efforts, seeking new partnerships that will enable them to become sources of both the expertise and the plant material needed at large scale in Europe and around the world. The great challenges to be overcome in order to fulfill their potential will be the work of not one but of many decades. Indeed, botanic gardens must come to see ecological restoration and the preservation of a healthy green biosphere as their primary long-term mission and the ultimate purpose of their collections and expertise.

ABSTRACT. In 1994, the European Botanic Gardens Consortium was established as a joint advisory committee of BGCI and IABG. It aimed at supporting collaborations of European Botanic to jointly cope with national and international challenges such as budget restrictions, lack of recognition, public outreach, or involvement in international conventions. One important initiative of the consortium was the first European Conference for Botanical Gardens: EuroGard was held in April 1997 at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, U.K., with nearly 200 participants from 31 countries. Aims of this conference were, i.a., to initiate a European Botanic Garden Action Plan. In addition, the future structure of the European Botanic Gardens Consortium was agreed upon. EuroGard 2 took place in April, 2000, at the Jardín Botánico Canario ‘Viera y Clavijo’ in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. More than 120 delegates from 30 countries at the congress took part in the launch of the Action Plan for Botanic Gardens in the European Union. Also remarkable was the signature of a memorandum of understanding between the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) and BGCI – improving collaboration in seed conservation. In July 2003, the National Botanic Garden of Belgium in Meise hosted EuroGard 3, which was held jointly with the education conference BEDUCO II. Over 150 people from 28 countries participated in the discussions of the implementation of the Action Plan for Botanic Gardens in the European Union.

The following EuroGards all had defined priorities related to actual challenges for the Botanic Gardens community: EuroGard 4, Pruhonice (Czech Republic, 2006): Botanic Gardens & the 2010 Challenge; EuroGard 5, Helsinki (Finland, 2009): Botanic Gardens in the Age of Climate Change; EuroGard 6, Chios Island (Greece, 2012): European Botanic Gardens in a Changing World; EuroGard 7, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle Paris (France, 2015): Botanic Gardens, People, & Plants for a Sustainable World – Challenges & responsibilities in the countdown to 2020; EuroGard 8, Jardim Botânico da Ajuda (Portugal, 2018): European Botanic Gardens in the Decade on Biodiversity, EuroGard 9, Budapest (Hungary, 2022): Botanic Gardens – where people & plants meet. EuroGard 10 in Rome (Italy) will deal with Botanic Gardens in the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. My talk will outline the history and rationals of all these EuroGard conferences and highlight major achievements of the meetings.

ABSTRACT. Global initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, which aims to bring 350 mha of degraded land under restoration by 2030, represent a threat and an opportunity for biodiversity conservation. The threat comes from ambiguous definitions of ‘restoration’, compounded by practical constraints such as seed/seedling availability, which results in large scale planting of fast-growing exotic monocultures, such as Eucalyptus and Acacia – in many cases displacing native species and damaging biodiversity. The opportunity is to incorporate native plant species into these initiatives, boosting biodiversity not just for the plants but for the millions of organisms that rely on those plants in their life cycles. Botanic gardens grow ca. 30% of all known plant diversity, including nearly 18,000 tree species. We are also experts in botanical survey, ecosystem functioning and useful plants that benefit both people and wildlife. However, we are not sufficiently engaged in large-scale restoration, often because we have other priorities, lack capacity, or are seen as irrelevant by restoration policymakers and practitioners. In December 2019, BGCI, Kew and IUCN SSC wrote to the Bonn Challenge Secretariat expressing our concerns about the lack of biodiversity safeguarding in large scale afforestation, particularly amongst carbon credit certifiers, who drive many large-scale planting programmes. The ’10 golden rules for reforestation’ paper and the BGCI-Kew Reforestation Conference followed in early 2021, but little in the way of political support. By the end of 2021, we realized that the botanical community needed to get more actively involved, and the Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) was born. With substantial funding from the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative, The Global Biodiversity Standard has been established to: • Carry out site-based assessments of Nature based Solutions, Forest Landscape Restoration and other ‘tree-planting’ projects. • Provide mentoring for land managers to maximise benefits for biodiversity. To date, working with the Society for Ecological Restoration, CIFOR-ICRAF, IUCN and other partners, TGBS hubs have been established in 15 countries and >200 assessors trained, the majority from botanic gardens and arboreta with practical experience in biodiverse ecological restoration. In this paper we outline how botanic gardens can work through TGBS to deploy their skills in botanical survey and specialist horticulture to help society to restore biodiversity.

ABSTRACT. The urgent need to halt biodiversity decline has led to EU-level actions like the Nature Restoration Law, prompting countries to seek national solutions for its implementation. In many nations, including Finland, biodiversity loss is most pronounced in human-altered environments such as agricultural areas and urban settings. Unlike some other European countries, Finland has not yet widely adopted the use of native plants in green construction and restoration. Challenges include the lack of regulation to ensure the genetic suitability of restoration materials and the need for systematic, large-scale production of native plant seeds and seedlings.

Botanic gardens, with their expertise in ex situ conservation developed over recent decades, often participate in ecological restoration projects, providing essential knowledge in plant propagation and habitat restoration through breeding programmes for endangered species. Additionally, botanic gardens and their parent organisations are vital for plant research, taxonomy, and conservation, engaging the community through educational programmes, workshops, and exhibitions. This expertise should be leveraged to upscale restoration activities and foster the co-creation of sustainable local economic models that could enhance the production of native plant material for habitat restoration and green construction.

The ‘UNP-Green’ project aims to harness the expertise of botanic gardens and other stakeholders to develop large-scale production methods for native plant seeds and seedlings. It seeks to establish national guidelines for their use and integrate these practices into green construction and restoration projects. The project is divided into three main work packages: (i) establishing rules and practices for seed and plant production, (ii) exploring the commercial potential of native plant production, and (iii) integrating native plant production into agricultural and green construction practices.

Key objectives include improving the ecological state of open areas and built environments, creating new business opportunities for green and agricultural entrepreneurs, promoting a culture of biodiversity conservation, and enhancing public health and well-being through diverse local environments. Expected outcomes include active restoration, new business opportunities, a cultural shift towards biodiversity conservation, and improved public health and well-being.

ABSTRACT. Recently Meise Botanic Garden completed a new greenhouse complex named the Green Ark. Modern greenhouse technology with computer controlled climatization in combination with smart design allows future proof conservation, use and visibility of our frost sensitive potted plant collections representing over 12.000 different plant taxa. Meise Botanic Garden has a long tradition in research on tropical plants, which is reflected in world level scientific collections. Highly specialized staff allowed us to build one of the largest taxonomic reference collections of among others succulent plants with a high percentage of well documented, rare and threatened species. In addition to optimal conditions for our permanent collections, the Green Ark also holds room for projects on reproduction of plants for ecosystem restoration and reintroduction of threatened indigenous species and for regeneration of seeds. After having reached high levels of expertise in seed banking of orthodox species, we will now target conservation research, planning and megacollection management of exceptional species in our collection. Although a large part of the tropical collections are visible in the Plant Palace, planted according to a biome concept, the vast majority of our collections were hidden for the large public along with the numerous conservation and research programs of the garden. In the pavilion amidst of the new greenhouses we installed a unique permanent exhibition and guided tours showcasing the role Botanic Gardens play in plant biodiversity research and conservation: from the safeguarding of the last specimens of species that are extinct in the wild, such as the Rizet’s coffee (Coffea rizetiana), to breeding programs on crop wild relatives such as bananas (Musa) that support research on food security for the future.

ABSTRACT. One of the key missions of Botanic Gardens is plant conservation, and in the context of the current global planetary extinction crisis, this mandate should have maximum priority and should be pursued with special commitment and undaunted resolve. Botanic Gardens should put at the centre of their action their unique expertise in growing and propagating plants, that is their fundamental activity since their inception. Botanic garden should reaffirm in society this role as their distinctive unique selling point. Plant propagation should be specially focused on threatened species, encompassing the existing diversity of the naturally occurring populations, aiming at understanding in detail their biology, germination and cultivation requirements and better understanding their specific habitat requirements and wider ecology. This information is really valuable for conservation and is not commonly known beforehand given the scarcity and rarity of threatened species. Botanic Garden should liaise with all key stakeholders such as local, National and European nature conservation authorities, land managers, conservation practitioners, agricultural authorities and commercial plant producers in the horticultural trade aiming at raising the status of botanic garden and plant conservation and developing joint plant propagation and habitat restoration activities with the ultimate goal of ensuring the optimal conservation of threatened species. Toward this end, 14 botanic gardens originating from Italy, France, Slovenia and Malta teamed up to develop the Seedforce project, funded through the EU Life Programme, focusing on 29 species of European interest, reported in bad conservation status, aiming reversing this worrying situation. All efforts aim at better understanding their biology, their habitat requirements, their germination and propagation requirements and reinforcing existing populations with well targeted plant translocation initiatives, after assessing their genetic diversity and essential trophic relations, modelling their ecological niche, and removing or mitigating the specific threat to these species in their growing site. This is a flagship project of the Italian seedbank and botanic garden networks, aiming at saving plant diversity, as the project claims.

Acknowledgements: Life Seedforce received funding from the Life Programme - The European Union funding instrument for the environment and climate action, under contract LIFE20/NAT/IT/001468

ABSTRACT. The European Regulation on Nature Restoration aims to fulfill Nature Directives, including the ambitious goal of planting three billion trees. It promotes ecological connectivity and integration with other EU policies, especially climate change adaptation. The Regulation mandates that member states create national restoration plans based on participatory, multi-stakeholder processes and identify priority areas for restoration following set criteria, while allowing flexibility to adapt based on national ecological, socioeconomic, and governance contexts.

Given the local nature of restoration efforts, projects must align with community needs and aspirations. Restoration planning should thus adopt a multi-scale and participatory prioritization approach. To operationalize this, a conceptual framework for forest habitat restoration in Spain is presented, incorporating both national and local-scale models.

At the national level, the model uses Spanish forest habitat maps (1:50,000 scale) and conservation status indicators (2dRUE-ES index) to identify areas in poor condition. These areas were further evaluated for their potential to enhance species connectivity (using ecological connector maps), mitigate drought risk, and reduce wildfire vulnerability. The resulting multi-criteria model helps identify priority habitats for restoration and serves as a heuristic framework to inform similar efforts across different regions.

Locally, a landscape-scale model was developed in southern Alicante and southern Valencia provinces (southeastern Spain, ~2,000 km² each). This model integrates participatory processes, population preferences, expected ecosystem service gains, cost assessments, and cost-effectiveness analyses. The process revealed discrepancies between different prioritization methods and underscored the value of models as decision-support tools in collaborative planning. Additionally, a living lab was established in southern Alicante to co-design restoration projects and foster stakeholder collaboration. Activities included workshops, webinars and other events to build cooperation and support landscape restoration in the area.

ABSTRACT. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 (UN Decade) aims to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation worldwide. To improve net gain from restoration for biodiversity, ecosystem integrity and human wellbeing, FAO, IUCN-CEM, and SER led a team of UN Decade partners to publish "Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration" (Standards of practice), with engagement by hundreds of people from over 57 countries. This document provides key recommendations for all phases of restoration projects, consistent with the principles of ecosystem restoration for the UN Decade. The recommended practices in the Standards of practice are applicable to the broad array of restorative activities included as ecosystem restoration under the UN Decade across all types of ecosystems and restoration projects. The Standards of Practice were developed through a synthesis of existing guidance for a broad array of restorative activities, from sustainable agriculture to ecological restoration. The document provides over 300 recommended practices that have been organized by components of the restoration process: assessment of the degradation drivers, planning to address them, implementation of restoration activities, ongoing management, and monitoring and evaluation to measure progress towards recovery. Within this voluntary guidance, the five components of the restoration process are presented in sequential order, with subcomponents detailed within each component, and practices listed within each subcomponent. The restoration process is, of course, not linear and some subcomponents and practices may be conducted simultaneously or in a different order than are presented. Moreover, there are “cross-cutting” subcomponents and practices that may need to be revisited throughout the restoration process. These include practices associated with broad engagement, adaptive management, and information sharing. With the publication of the Standards of practice, there is now a corresponding need to promote their use and adoption. To that end, FAO, IUCN-CEM and SER continue their partnership to lead efforts to develop a multi-tool web-based platform which will provide: i) a searchable navigation tool for exploring the Standards of practice; ii) an E-learning course to train users on the concepts and use of the Standards of practice; and iii) a decision support and project assessment tool.

ABSTRACT. The updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) introduces a suite of voluntary complementary actions designed to operationalize the post-2020 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for plants contributing to the achievement of the KMGBF targets. Emphasis is placed on national strategy alignment, ex situ and in situ integration, ecological restoration, taxonomic capacity-building, and mobilization of high-resolution occurrence and trait data. At the recent Global Partnership for Plant Conservation (GPPC) conference in St. Louis, coordinated dialogues focused on scaling implementation pathways across regional networks, including the role of European Botanic Gardens as conservation hubs, policy interfaces and in the generation and provision of data. Key outcomes included renewed collaboration between botanical gardens, herbaria, and indigenous communities and consensus on the need for standardized indicators for monitoring progress and greater resource mobilization. As in other parts of the world, European institutions were called on to strengthen cross-border collaboration and to align national targets with GSPC frameworks to maximize regional impact and provide global coherence in plant conservation.

ABSTRACT. “Botanic gardens are institutions holding documented collections of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education” (Peter Wyse Jackson). Taking this definition, BGCI developed the Botanic Garden Accreditation Scheme to distinguish between just gardens and botanic gardens. The scheme is designed to highlight the value of activities that botanic gardens do uniquely well — such as documenting, understanding, growing and conserving plant diversity across the taxonomic array. It is the only international recognised scheme to demonstrate that botanic gardens have global best practices in place when it comes to plant conservation.

With more than 100 institutions accredited since this scheme was launched in 2018, the accreditation scheme has served botanic gardens in many ways. The scheme allows gardens to earn distinction within the international botanical community. Reaching this high level of excellence can be used when applying for funding, reaching stakeholders and to create tighter links with other organisations in the community. It can also increase your reach with the public and it demonstrates that the institution carries global best practices in plant conservation. It can also be used within your management to increase the value of botanical curation within a university or government larger organisation.

Institutions applying for accreditation are assessed on various criteria, including: leadership and strategic direction; collections management; horticulture; public engagement with a plant theme; plant conservation actions; research capacity; specialist expertise; sustainability and ethics, and networking in the plant sector.

In this presentation we will showcase examples on how accreditation has helped botanic gardens raise their standards, and how BGCI is modifying the standard aligning the target to make sure this is a framework of maturity to which gardens can assess themselves against and a framework of mentorship for growth.

ABSTRACT. Among the estimated 450,000 known plant species, 40% are threatened with extinction and over 70,000 await scientific description. Preserving this incredible diversity begins with a vital first step: documenting it.

World Flora Online (WFO) is a unique international initiative established in 2012 and led by the taxonomic community that provides open-access, authoritative and continually updated information on all known plant species. WFO already includes nearly 380,000 plant species, with the goal of providing up-to-date taxonomic treatments for 80% of all known plants by 2030.

The initiative brings together two fundamental components into a single global portal: a consensus classification of the world’s plants along with detailed species profiles, including names, synonyms, descriptions, and distributions. It also highlights where new information is needed, for example on poorly known groups and unexplored regions, stimulating research and collaborations to fill those knowledge gaps.

WFO was established to meet a global target for 2020 included in the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) – first adopted in 2002 and updated in 2010 and 2024. WFO meets one of GSPC’s main goals: to identify and map all plant species on earth. It is also the only international initiative explicitly mentioned in the GSPC’s Voluntary Complementary Actions approved in 2024 and supporting the achievement of the targets for 2030 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

WFO is created, curated, moderated, and updated by a global community of botanical experts. Led by a consortium of over 50 botanical institutions worldwide, this collaborative effort ensures that taxonomic knowledge is widely shared, openly accessible and contributes directly to one of humanity’s greatest challenges: preserving biodiversity.

Today, increasingly more databases are relevant to and used by botanical gardens, such as the BGCI PlantSearch and GlobalTreeSearch. These are making use of WFO’s taxonomic backbone which has the potential also to be built into individual collection management systems. The WFO taxonomic backbone also feeds into the Catalogue of Life (CoL) and from there it is utilised by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). It is likely that the WFO will also be increasingly used for CITES standard nomenclatures and checklists as well as by other conservation initiatives.

Having up to date, accurate and accessible information on plants is an essential and fundamental part of conserving the world’s plant diversity. The WFO initiative aims to meet this need and provide a vital tool for plant conservationists worldwide.

ABSTRACT. Up to a century ago, Europe was covered by hedges. These natural corridors through our landscapes harboured many natural enemies of pests, and fed humans, insects, and other animals. They also provided shade during heat waves, absorbed water during droughts, prevented soil erosion during floods, and a general sense of place-making. Intensification of agriculture after the second world war and ongoing urbanisation destroyed most European hedges. Botanic Gardens, especially those situated in urban areas, can play a vital role in reviving the tradition of planting and maintaining hedges to beat urban heat, and create and connect biodiversity hotspots. Several challenges need to be overcome. Firstly, climate change urges for the use of different plant species in hedges as compared with a century ago. Secondly, ecosystem services need to be quantified to evaluate which species composition and management practices work best at certain localities. Lastly, new ways of blended financing need to be developed to ensure long term funding for sustainable maintenance. At the Leiden botanic garden, we apply insect and wildlife cameras and audio recorders to identify and quantify animals living in and around hedges. Vertebrates and insects are being recorded with Audiomoths, Reconyx and Diopsis cameras, respectively. Images and sounds captured are automatically analysed using custom-made software. Our surveys reveal substantial use of hedges by local wildlife, during the day as well as at night, including previously unrecorded interactions between native vertebrates and non-native rewilding exotic garden escapees,illustrating the naturalising process of newly arriving species in evolving urban communities. By sharing these results with our visitors in City Nature Challenges and other activities, we strive for more financial and social commitment to climate resilient biodiverse hedges for urban greening.

ABSTRACT. Ex situ conservation is vital for safeguarding plant species that cannot be conserved through conventional seed banking, particularly exceptional species. While the botanical community has historically focused on seed and pollen banking, maintaining genetically diverse living collections is essential for long-term conservation success. However, current practices often lack standardised, accession-level data and coordinated management across institutions, limiting the effectiveness of these efforts. In contrast, the zoological community has developed robust, pedigree-based management systems to maintain the genetic health of captive animal populations. Adapting this metacollection framework for plants offers significant potential to improve the viability of living collections. Using case studies including Brighamia insignis and Amorphophallus titanum, we demonstrate how pedigree-based approaches can reveal gaps in genetic diversity and inform more strategic conservation planning. Our assessment of over 1,200 A. titanum accessions from 111 institutions highlights the urgent need for standardised record-keeping, greater exchange of plant material, and improved tracking of individual provenance. Collaboration across regional, national, and global levels is critical to transforming ex situ plant conservation and preserving biodiversity for future generations.

ABSTRACT. Several botanical gardens have, next to historical buildings, energy-consuming glasshouses. The combination of historical buildings and glasshouses with obsolete techniques results in a high carbon footprint. Next to the production of renewal energy, the climate crisis urges a drastic change in how we renovate and heat our buildings to become climate neutral by 2045. To this end, Meise Botanic Garden has developed an energy master plan in which the primary energy requirement will be reduced by more than half in the coming decade. It fits in with the goal of the European Commission to reduce the greenhouse gas emission by 2030 to at least 55% compared to 1990. It will be demonstrated how the combination of innovative heating techniques, renewable energy, sustainable renovation and circular use of building materials will make it possible to become climate neutral. It will be shown that public gardens can lead by example, promoting sustainable practices and responsible energy consumption. In doing so public gardens do not only lower their ecological footprint but also serve as an inspiration to all who visit, reinforcing the importance of conservation and sustainability.