From 2nd-15thNovember, 21 staff from 13 of China’s botanical gardens have been attending a horticulture training course at Kunming Botanic Garden and Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG). The course has been arranged by the Chinese Union of Botanic Gardens (CUBG), with the aim of raising horticulture capacity throughout botanical gardens nationwide.

The two-week CUBG horticulture training course came to a successful end on November 21, marked by receiving certificates of completion from Prof. Hu Huabin, CUBG secretary general and deputy director of XTBG.

The opening was held at Kunming Botanical Garden on November 2. Prof. Sun Hang, director of Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), encouraged the participants to learn from experienced horticulturists, study hard together and improve capacity.

Mr. Martyn Dickson, senior horticulturist at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE), and David Tricker, indoor horticulturist at RBGE, were invited to be key teachers at the training. They taught pruning, seed sowing, plant care and management, propagation, etc.

The course was comprised of theory course in the morning, practice in the afternoon, and discussion in the evening.

The first part of the training took place in Kunming Botanical Garden from November 2-10. The teachers like Prof. Sun Weibang, Hu Shaoqing and others introduced comprehensive conservation of wild plant species with extremely small populations and establishment of living collections; landscape arrangement of gardening plant; common plant pests; discovery of new plant species; standard of investigating and collecting germplasm of wild plant species with extremely small populations; etc.

The second part of the course took place in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG). The five-day training included identification of tropical plants at species and genus levels, management of plant information, gardening machinery, management of living collections, landscape improvement, themed exhibitions, etc.

The training course was sponsored by CUBG. Like the course over the past years (2013-2016), three participants in 2017 with excellent performance will be provided a chance to study in Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh or some other famous botanical gardens in UK.

Prof. Sun Hang makes opening speech

Senior horticulturist Martyn Dickson speaks

Theory studies

Training at Kunming Botanic Garden

Tropical plant identification in XTBG

Operating gardening machines at XTBG

Prof. Hu Huabin poses a photo with trainees