A: Horticulture

Horticulture is the one common activity linking all collections of living plants. Good horticultural practice is crucial for the maintenance and utilisation of plant collections, and it should be emphasised and accepted that botanical horticulture is a special area of horticulture requiring a distinct set of skills. All users of plant collections rely on the horticultural expertise of collection holders to acquire and maintain collections. Poor standards in horticulture are detrimental to all the other activities carried out in botanic and similar gardens.

In developing, maintaining and curating healthy plant collections, horticultural staff play a key role in satisfying the requirements of diverse user groups, including science, education, conservation, training and amenity. As well as successfully cultivating a wide diversity of plants, horticultural staff involved in collections-based gardens need to be familiar with a broad range of other activities, including plant records, propagation, landscape design, interpretation and numerous aspects of legislation and plant acquisition procedures.

Horticulturists should encourage the use and appreciation of collections by improving plant labelling, increasing access, promoting communication with users, appealing more to children, explaining issues of collections’ management and presentation, creating more interesting and/or appropriate designs and features and trying to make the collections and layouts more relevant to the people who use them.

PlantNet aims to promote the highest standards of horticulture in the cultivation and use of plant collections.

To achieve this aim, PlantNet will:

• organise workshops dealing with the cultivation and maintenance of plants
• act as a forum and catalyst for the dissemination of information and expertise amongst its membership and other appropriate bodies
• hold a workshop or conference focusing on collections’ policies (including policies for acquisition, accession, de-accession and representation)
• encourage training of young horticultural staff by promoting national and international staff exchanges
• take a direct interest in horticultural education and training
• generally promote and encourage high standards in horticulture
• promote the importance and the highest standards of record keeping; this will be achieved primarily through the PlantNet Plant Records Group
• seek to work with others to improve interpretation
• encourage horticultural staff to collaborate with landscape architects, where appropriate, in the development or redevelopment of new features or areas
• promote a better understanding of the status (and through that the terms and conditions of employment) of horticultural staff and recognition of their skills
• encourage an appreciation of the value of integrated working practices within a team (internal and external) rather than in isolation
• encourage collection holders to make their collections more attractive through better design as well as by increasing the number of plants that are educationally and scientifically valuable
• work in collaboration with, and mutually raise the profile of, other specialist groups, e.g. International Plant Propagators’ Society, Professional Gardeners’ Guild, National Trust, National Trust for Scotland.

Many of these aims can be achieved through training workshops and conferences – see D: Training.