By Simon Young

My interest in native (or naturalised) wildflowers really kicked off when I started growing plants from seed for butterfly and moth caterpillars and for pollinators. And photographing them was a relaxing break from trying to photograph skipper butterflies!  When visiting gardens, I was struck by the amount of effort and money devoted to botanical gardens that normally feature exotic plant species. The Victorians would have had much wider access to native wildflowers so were probably more interested in new plants from overseas and we appear to have continued this trend. What were once common plants are becoming increasingly rare in the wild and, if not seen and valued by significant numbers of people, will dwindle further. Many British and Irish wildflowers are now on the verge of extinction and are very difficult to find. Some of the rarest are held in the Millennium Seed Bank but are obviously invisible to us.

This inspired me to try and find any labelled collections of natives that are open to the public i.e. the equivalent of a botanic garden for British herbaceous wildflowers. I am aware of the existence of several herbaria of pressed specimens as opposed to living collections.

I approached the organisations listed below that I thought might have a collection and then continued by following up on any further suggestions:

• Plantlife
• Natural History Museum
• RHS Wisley advisory service
• Eden Project
• Kew Gardens/Wakehurst Place/Millennium Seed Bank
• Cambridge University Botanic Gardens
• Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
• Plant Heritage – National Plant Collection Scheme
• National Trust
• Specialist seed companies – John Chambers, Emorsgate
• Plant Network
• Wildflower Society
• National Botanic Garden of Wales

What follows is a summary of my findings, where positive, to date:

• Natural History Museum: houses the British and Irish herbarium and has a small wildlife garden.

• Royal Botanic Gardens Kew at Wakehurst Place/ Millennium Seed Bank: don’t have a planted UK wildflower collection. The Millennium Seedbank has good collections of seeds available but this is a dormant archive and not intended for the general public. Although there are some native plant beds, they’re not huge and are intended to showcase different habitats rather than having lots of plant species. Experts at Kew’s UK Native Seed Hub have begun a project to enhance the resilience and coherence of the UK’s ecological network by increasing the quality, quantity and diversity of native plants and seeds available for conservation and habitat restoration. The project is initially concentrating on plants from lowland meadows or semi-natural grassland. The project outputs are:
  • Provide seed and plants for direct use in conservation projects, focussing on specific-origin, rare or highly-specialised material which is not otherwise available to UK practitioners. This includes growing plants which are difficult to cultivate in restoration programmes.
  • Provide scientific advice and technical services to help conservation organisations and the native seed industry overcome constraints to improving seed quality and making a wider range of species and specific-origin material available.
  • Build awareness and demand for high quality, native-origin plant materials, engaging with all those involved in the specification, procurement, regulation and use of native seed and plants.

• The National Botanic Garden of Wales has a display showing 101 taxa of rare/extinct Welsh plants. The plants come from four Welsh National Nature Reserves: Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia, the Great Orme’s Maes y Facrell NNR on the Welsh north coast, Kenfig near Port Talbot on the Welsh south coast and the rhos pastures on Waun Las, the NNR at the Garden in Carmarthenshire.

• The National Wildflower Centre in Knowsley closed in January 2017 and transferred to the Eden Centre in Cornwall. New programmes are being devised with the bold aims of reversing ecological decline and bringing wildflowers back into the UK’s living culture. A new facility is being established at Eden, including seed cleaning and seed storage facilities. The aim is to build up living seed banks, and work with other advocates to display and incorporate this legacy into the UK’s urban and rural landscapes. The Eden Centre had a display of Cornish arable plants in 2019 and new areas are in development. 

• Cambridge University Botanic Garden has a British Wild Plants area that was developed in the 1960’s as an ecological display, and was constructed from carboniferous and oolitic limestone, and includes a chalk grassland and a boulder clay slope.  This feature offers opportunity to grow plants which enjoy each of these habitats. The area is deliberately maintained as a naturalistic planting, to encourage species to self-seed, and to give an authentic ‘natural’ appearance. Only 38 plants are identified by their plant list, of which 16 are sporophytes, although the Living Collections Strategy aims to include more British native species.

• The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh objectives include Target 8: at least 75 per cent of threatened plant species in ex situ collections (preferably in the country of origin) and at least 20 per cent available for recovery and restoration programmes. In support of this target a Scottish Plant Conservation Programme area of the Nursery has been developed which contains 171 native plants of Scotland. Representative habitats are open to the public with information panels and guides.

• The National Trust: cares for hundreds of parks and gardens that are home to a vast range of rare and historically important plants collected over the last 400 years from around the world. The Plant Conservation Centre was set up to help conserve the rich diversity of plants held by them but is aimed primarily at cultivars and exotic plants. They do not hold a collection of UK natives although their estate is increasingly managed to conserve such plants in the wild.

• Plant Heritage: manage the UK National Collections which consist of 650+ horticultural cultivars. Some collections have double-flowered cultivars of UK native plants although they do not appear to contain the wild type.

• Royal Horticultural Society: does not hold a collection as such but promotes wildflowers through advising the ten best to grow in the garden and advice on establishing wildflower meadows.

Why would a national collection of native wildflowers be of benefit?

• To promote wildflowers by making them more visible to the general public. If they see and appreciate their beauty this could lead to increased consumer demand and wider growing by individuals and nurseries. Who knows they might even escape back into the wild!

• If people are not aware of and value wildflowers then our efforts to protect them will not be widely supported.

• As an academic and professional resource.

• To encourage use of a more diverse range of wildflowers by artists and photographers.

• To make it easier and more convenient for botanists to see them by holding examples in a limited number of places rather than being scattered throughout the UK.

“The danger is we continue in the preserve and protect mode, rather than reversing the long decline. It is about being creative, and grabbing opportunities, showcasing, expanding, and celebrating a wonderful resource… placing wildflowers more centrally in our culture, and putting them firmly in the headlights”. Richard Scott Head of the National Wildflower Centre at The Eden Project.

“The best way to save plants is to successfully cultivate and propagate them, then share them with others”. Roy Lancaster

Which brings me to my questions for you:

• Do you know of any other collections that I have not found?
• If there is no complete collection should there be one?
• If there should be, how should it be created, curated and maintained? For example:
  • by utilising existing infrastructure in the form of RHS gardens, botanical gardens or the like?
  • using a dispersed collection that is coordinated by a central organisation and made searchable via a website? This could be similar to UK National Collections of horticultural plants coordinated by Plant Heritage.
  • by creating a new national collection of native plants?
• What should the parameters of any collection be? Angiosperms, all herbaceous, including woody plants?

If you have any information on native plant collections or can help with my questions, please contact me via PlantNetwork.

Reference websites:

About the author

Simon Young is a retired general naturalist, with a degree in biology from a time when supervising which species got on the Ark was part of the practicals!