Botanical garden

• Today, The Palm Beaches continues to recognize its international roots by celebrating Japanese culture throughout the community.
• From visiting the stunning new exhibition to immersive art, music, and history lessons, there are numerous opportunities to experience Japanese culture in The Palm Beaches.
• Learn about some of the organizations spotlighting Japanese culture in 2023 and 2024 below.
• Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens (Delray Beach): The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is a center for Japanese arts and culture in South Florida.

• Battelle has funded a new portfolio of 14 out-of-classroom education programs that build science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills through the latest awards with its Central Ohio STEM Grants.
• "Through this program, Battelle is committing more resources toward empowering our local partners’ ideas to expand access to STEM opportunities for students across Central Ohio,” said Wes Hall, Vice President of Philanthropy and Education.
• The Ohio Soybean Council will reach 400 students in Central Ohio afterschool/summer programs with agriculture-related entrepreneurship lessons, delivered by trained pre-service educators from Ohio State University.
• Unplugged kits from TECH CORPS will excite and empower students on a range of STEM topics ranging from algorithms to virtual reality.

• Can we justify maintaining water-hungry botanic gardens in an age of climate change and rising water prices?
• Perhaps such gardens are no longer suited to Australia’s changing climate – if they ever were.

A brief history

• They were test gardens used to establish the suitability of crops and vegetables introduced from Europe and other colonies.
• Nostalgia, European ideas of beauty and the desire to test introduced varieties meant botanic gardens were planted with trees familiar to British visitors.
• Oaks, elms and conifers were all planted, along with the kinds of flowers and shrubs naturalised in British private and public gardens.
• Botanic gardens also reversed this exchange by collecting, cultivating and internationally distributing Australian native plants deemed potentially useful or beautiful.

Facing the climate emergency

• As the climate has shifted, droughts, changes in water table and climate change uncertainty have foregrounded the plight of these thirsty trees, and some have died.
• Today’s botanic gardens are still test gardens, and are now important sites for global climate change research.
• Adelaide Botanic Gardens offer a plant selection guide where residents can check whether a plant is suited to their local conditions.

Colonial memorials

• There has been a recent trend to erase reminders of our colonial past.
• Do the best lessons come from removing colonial memorials, or from rewriting their meaning?

Shifting landscapes

• Botanic gardens are adapting to climate change, replacing dying and stressed trees and outdated gardens with hardier varieties and new possibilities, conserving endangered species and acting as proving grounds for climate impacts.
• Botanic Gardens Australia and New Zealand offers a landscape succession toolkit: a guide for mapping out what is doomed, what most needs preserving and what adaptations are most pertinent for our botanic gardens of the future.

• HIGH POINT, N.C., March 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden and Safari Professionals have partnered together to enhance the Conservation Wildlife Travel Program for the OKC Zoo and its supporters.
• "Partnering with Safari Professionals on a conservation travel program is a fantastic way for the Oklahoma City Zoo to deliver on our mission of connecting people with the world's vanishing wildlife to inspire conservation action," says Dr. Dwight Lawson, Executive Director/CEO of the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden.
• Safari Professionals offers its zoo and aquarium partners many unique benefits as part of these conservation partnerships.
• Safari Professionals and the Oklahoma City Zoo are already in discussions for continuing this partnership into 2024 and 2025, including potential destinations such as Alaska, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and Costa Rica.