Webinar 3: Conservation Beyond the Garden Gate

In this webinar, we’ll hear about two very different ways in which botanic gardens are engaging with communities ‘beyond the garden gate’ to help conserve our plants and landscapes. Both approaches rely on pollen. The first involves the creation of a wildlife corridor through Melbourne for the movement of native pollinating insects. The second uses wind-dispersed pollen to understand present and past environments.

The first speaker is Emma Cutting. Emma is the Founder and CEO of The Heart Gardening Project (THGP), an environmental charity based in Melbourne that combines community, science and care to joyfully connect humans to humans, humans to nature and nature to nature through street gardening. THGP’s current focus is creating the Australian-first Melbourne Pollinator Corridor, which Emma spent years designing. It’s an 8km community-driven wildlife corridor that will link 2 large green patches that run along the Birrarung (Yarra River), Westgate Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

The second speaker is Alex Wall. Alex is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra working in the fields of palaeoecology, which is the ecology of the past, and palynology, which is the study of plant pollen and other microscopic organisms. He uses fossil pollen to understand how ecosystems have changed over time. He also teaches students and the public about palynology through a citizen science project called VegeMap. This project uses wind-borne pollen collected in places like the Australian National Botanic Gardens to learn more about today’s environment, which will help us better understand the past and safeguard our future.

Join via Costa’s Facebook page, YouTube channel, LinkedIn page, X or Instagram pages.

If you missed the webinar you can watch it on our YouTube channel, here.