An Introduction to Research Conducted at UBC Botanical Garden
Anyone who visits UBC Botanical Garden can see and feel that it is a place of beauty and biological diversity as well as human and ecological well-being. However, not everyone fully appreciates the fact that the Garden is also a space of investigation, experimentation, and learning—in other words, a space of research. Perhaps this is in part because of assumptions that are often made about what counts as research. In my new role as writer-in-residence and science communicator at UBC Botanical Garden, I have been doing a lot of thinking about this question. What does it mean to do research in a garden? Might understanding of botanical gardens and research alike be expanded if people knew more about it?
What do we Mean When we Talk about Research?
Dictionaries define research in broad terms: that is, as any form of careful study aimed at increasing or improving knowledge. However, in Western cultures, there is a tendency to give special weight to scientific research based on controlled experiments, large-scale modelling, statistical analyses and other quantitative tools. Some people put this kind of research on a pedestal and assume they will not be able to understand it. Others dismiss it, because it seems too distant from the concrete difficulties of everyday life. Such assumptions are problematic because they limit the extent to which research can become part of public discourse and debate. But narrow understandings of research can also lead to some types being undervalued, despite their relevance to complex environmental problems such as climate change.
A botanical garden is an excellent place to do ‘hard science’, but it can also host many other types of research, each with the potential to increase knowledge of the natural world or the impact of human societies within it. Below I explore some of the different types of research being conducted at UBC Botanical Garden. You may also be interested in consulting the Garden’s new Research in the Garden map, which provides a visual representation of the variety of research types, and shows where in the garden exemplary projects have been undertaken.
Exploring Different Types of Research in the Garden
As a start, UBC Botanical Garden’s extensive, carefully documented plant collections provide a vital resource for plant scientists. The fact that these collections contain species from all over the world, growing in similar conditions, enables researchers to work at multiple levels. For example, researchers may look for general patterns across different species, make comparisons between plant populations in different locations, or focus on the impact of local conditions. Access to botanical garden collections is especially valuable to researchers studying processes of evolution and adaptation among plants. What’s more, the ecological health of the communities in which the Garden’s plants grow makes it an excellent site for the study of certain animals (e.g., bats, birds, and insects), and the relationships between plants and other living organisms.
At the same time, gardens that are open to the public are also social spaces, which permits other forms of research that are increasingly important. For example, they are ideal sites for developing and testing sustainable design innovations such as the MycoToilet, a waterless composting toilet designed by UBC’s Biogenic Architecture Lab. While this toilet has numerous real-world applications, a trial run at the Garden will permit designers to test its performance in a relatively controlled setting.
Botanical gardens are also well suited to community research projects that make use of local volunteers to carry out data collection—often on a larger scale than would normally be possible, or over an extended period of time. In addition to scientific knowledge, these projects generate educational benefits for participants and encourage them to become more involved in caring for their local environment. They translate abstract and seemingly distant environmental situations into concrete observations that can be connected to everyday experiences. For example, UBC Botanical Garden’s long-term project to document changes in the blooming of the magnolias in its collection, demonstrates the effects of climate change on trees in Vancouver. Similarly, Nature Vancouver’s monthly surveys of bird sightings in the garden will provide a record of changes to local populations and migration patterns over time.
Botanical gardens are also increasingly the site of new forms of policy-oriented research. That is, research that fills in the gaps between different kinds of scientific knowledge and develops new ways for it to be applied. For example, UBC Botanical Garden is currently collaborating with the Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership to incorporate regional ecological and biodiversity information into online maps that can be easily accessed by planners and policymakers. These maps will support better decision-making processes about things like carbon sequestration potential and where to focus conservation efforts.
Perhaps the least appreciated form of research that takes place in botanical gardens, is horticultural research. Sometimes this research is undertaken in a controlled manner at the nursery (e.g., experiments with different methods of propagation and cultivation). But it is also conducted within the garden itself, by working horticulturalists and gardeners who develop a deep understanding of local conditions and plant communities. This research is not standardized or quantifiable the way ‘hard science’ would demand, but it is rigorous in its own way, thanks to the depth and detail of observations that the work of gardening builds up over time.
Although not always recognized as such, the knowledge produced through horticultural research is vital to our collective capacity for environmental action, both within the garden and outside it. On the one hand, it can inform the way a variety of vegetated landscapes are cared for. On the other, it is an underappreciated source of ideas for how to improve local environmental conditions, and how to think about higher-level problems such as climate change.
Climate Change and the Benefits of Supporting a Variety of Research Types
Climate change is often characterized as a global problem that, it seems, can only be addressed through the most high-powered scientific modelling and government intervention. But as soon as we start to draw on a variety of research types, we can see that it is in fact a multifaceted collection of problems, at least some of which can be responded to in constructive ways. For example, thinking about climate change in terms of which plant species in a garden are more likely to survive frequent droughts, or adapt to warming conditions, brings us directly to the question of how to enhance these capacities. Of course, it also makes clear the species we are likely to lose—which is painful, but that is also an important element of climate action, because it shows us why it is worth acting.
Varied forms of garden-based research give us a vision of the future that can engage many more people in constructive action—whether directly, through community research projects, or indirectly, through support for the interventions research may eventually yield. Of course, for research to reach people in this way, it must be made available in ways that are interesting and accessible. That’s where I (and other science communicators) come in.
I hope you will be intrigued by my first project in my new role: the Research in the Garden map. Though it gives only a small taste of the research taking place in the Garden, it invites readers and visitors to expand their sense of what research is, how and where it is conducted, and by whom. In the process, I hope we may also expand our ideas of what a garden is for, and how research benefits all of us and our shared environments.
Written by Erin Despard
Writer-in-residence
UBC Botanical Garden & Nitobe Memorial Garden