TV gardening expert Christine Walkden is encouraging more people to become garden plant conservationists through the Plant Guardian project. Christine, the BBC One Show’s resident gardening guru, wants anyone who has a rare or endangered plant in their garden to become a Plant Guardian and make sure its existence is recorded. Steps can then be taken to ensure it thrives.
Through the project, Plant Heritage has found some extremely rare plants it feared had been lost but have been conserved and added to the National Plant Collection.
Although not every gardener has the time or space to have their own collection, anyone can be involved in saving rare plants so they can be enjoyed long into the future, Christine said.
Among the plants recently registered in the Plant Guardian project are rare lavenders from Tim Upson, the new RHS director of horticulture. He brought Lavandula dentata var. candicans ‘Agadir’ back from Morocco.
Tim and another National Plant Collection holder, Simon Charlesworth, also both listed Lavandula angustiifolia ‘Nana atropurpurea’.
