Contact details

Garden information

Garden primary contact (for BGCI purposes)

Individual submitting the application (if not the primary garden contact)

BGCI Membership

Leadership, Strategies, and Policies

Planning documentation are essential management tools for running any organisation, large or small. To ensure that plant conservation is prioritised and progress can be assessed, plant conservation should be a clear component of your garden’s strategy or annual plan.

Collections of conservation value

Collections are expensive to build and maintain, and the value of documented collections is primarily their use for research, conservation and education. The utility of collections for these purposes is an important element of what constitutes a botanic garden. Accurate documentation of a botanic garden’s living collection is essential for its effective management and for the success of research and conservation work.

As part of the Advanced Conservation Practitioner Application, BGCI will complete a Collections Assessment to determine the conservation importance of your botanic garden’s collections.

BGCI has developed a methodology to determine the conservation importance of botanic garden’s collections through the following metrics: number of unique collections, number of unique taxa, number of threatened taxa, and proportion of wild origin collections. BGCI will evaluate your botanic garden’s collections through PlantSearch and ThreatSearch.

Collections Assessment

Once the garden has completed and passed the application for Advanced Conservation Practitioner Accreditation, BGCI will complete a collections assessment. This is a requirement to receive the accreditation and costs USD 500.

In order to complete the assessment, BGCI requires a few details.

Public education on conservation issues

Botanic gardens connect society with nature and, globally, engage with more than 500 million visitors annually. Informing and educating visitors about plants and conservation should be a key priority for your garden.

Conservation horticulture

Botanic gardens conserve and manage a far greater range of plant diversity than any other professional sector, and knowing how to grow a wide range of plants is a key skill set amongst botanic garden horticulturists. Accurate plant labels are vital to the curation of a garden’s collection and are an essential feature of a botanic garden. It is particularly important that protocols are recorded and shared to ensure others benefit from your expertise and experience.

Conservation science research

Wherever possible, gardens should utilise their living and preserved collections, as well as their botanical expertise to support and participate in scientific research.

Conservation activities

Botanic gardens as a professional community possess a unique skill set that encompasses finding, identifying and conserving plant diversity. Gardens can harness their expertise for plant conservation in many different ways.

Sustainability and ethics

Botanic gardens have a responsibility to practice what they preach, and if caring for the environment is one of the key messages to the general public, then demonstrating sustainable and ethical practices in the way the organisation is run is essential.

Staff commitment to conservation

Botanic gardens should demonstrate their commitment to plant conservation by ensuring that members of staff have the time to conduct plant conservation related activities as a part of their role.

Network membership

Ideally, botanic gardens should participate in botanical networks or partnerships, as this provides an opportunity to share information and co-ordinate public engagement, research and conservation activities.

Comments and survey on application process

Thank you for testing out the test application for Conservation Practitioner. In order to ensure that the accreditation process meets the standards and expectations of botanic gardens, we would greatly appreciate your feedback below. Your feedback will remain confidential and will help us to finalise the accreditation process for BGCI's Conservation Practitioner Accreditation.

Data Information

BGCI will use the institutional information you provide determine if your garden should be a BGCI Accredited Botanic Garden. The uses of the information, dependent on the success of your application is detailed below.

If you are a successful applicant, any personal and institutional data you have provided will be kept by BGCI for five years, the length of the accreditation period, so that we can contact you in relation to the set up and administration of the accreditation, to provide information useful to maintain the accreditation (i.e. research on botanic gardens or conservation), and to provide information on conservation in botanic gardens that will support efforts to achieve BGCI's Conservation Practitioner and Advanced Conservation Practitioner accreditations.

If you are an unsuccessful applicant, the personal and institutional information you have provided will be kept by BGCI for one year, so that we can contact you to help you achieve accreditation.

BGCI will not share your application, results or supporting documentation without your explicit permission.

Submit your application