IT contains the lipstick tree, a unique collection of conifers and – poignantly – the Tree of Tranquility memorial for families who have lost babies.
Dundee’s Botanic Garden is also the site of the world’s first Covid memorial garden but despite its importance for the people of Dundee and Scotland as a whole, the city’s cash-strapped university has caused an outcry over a proposal to close it.
More than 15,000 people have now signed a petition launched to save the garden while the former curator, who has not been replaced, has criticised the potential loss of “an internationally important” centre of knowledge.
As well as a beautiful sanctuary which locals and tourists have enjoyed for many years, the botanic garden in Dundee is at the forefront of an international project looking at how cities can protect their citizens from the harsh effects of climate change.
As temperatures soared over much of Scotland and the rest of the UK last week, former curator, Kevin Frediani, told the Sunday National that the importance of botanic gardens like Dundee’s was greater than ever.
Now operations manager at the National Trust for Scotland, he feels free to speak out about the university’s proposal.
“The irony is that this is happening at precisely the moment we need such places most,” he said. “Botanic gardens are not easily replaced. Their collections, knowledge and community relationships are built over decades. Once lost, they cannot simply be reassembled.”
The university is considering closure of the garden as part of a series of drastic, cost saving measures following financial mismanagement that left it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Already 645 jobs have been cut and a further 190 losses were announced last week.
In the midst of such devastating job losses, it might have been thought that the potential closure of the botanic garden would go unremarked – but the opposite has been the case with an outcry gathering momentum.
Objectors include bereaved parents who have dedicated leaves to their babies on the Tree of Tranquility and have valued the garden as a place they can remember them in peace.
Said one: “The botanic garden houses a beautiful baby loss remembrance tree for which our son has a leaf. This space offers my husband and I a quiet space for reflection and we visit there on special days like his birthday and Mother’s Day. The thought of losing this is truly devastating.”
Even if the space remains as a park, Frediani predicts that without a curator and dedicated gardeners, the plants and trees that have been so carefully nurtured will be lost, taking with them important information that could help the city in future.
Founded in 1971, Dundee is one of the more modern botanic gardens which he said has added to its prominence.
It is the only botanic garden in the UK founded on ecological principles and is one of a handful that remain formerly linked to a university.
“It was established with a focus on plant ecology and has evolved to explore and explain how systems work,’ said Frediani.
Over the years it has become a novel ecosystem – a prototype for Nature-based Solutions - demonstrating the potential for urban areas to become sustainable human habitats.
It is the fact that the gardens have collections of plants and trees that make them so valuable for research because it shows which would grow best under various controlled conditions.
“It allows us to compare and contrast them growing in Scotland after they have been transported from the country they have been collected,” said Frediani. “The big question is what we stand to lose because this isn’t just about closing a garden - it represents a lost society.”
“If we think about the heatwaves that we’re experiencing today, we already know that the vegetation in our cities has been traditionally overlooked and undervalued. The legacy of past generations is at risk and will not be the vegetation that survives the change that we are all moving through.”
He said what was needed was new successional plantings as part of planned Nature-based Solutions, which is what the botanic garden had been prototyping.
“It means better understanding of how to select and use plants in a different way – as natural engineering solutions - to alleviate and mitigate climate change and help cities adapt to become sustainable urban ecosystems,” said Frediani.
Dundee Botanic Garden has actually been part of an EU-funded project involving six cities across Europe looking at how to help humans and nature flourish in a period of climate change.
“It’s a collaboration of designers, architects, urbanists and botanists like me who have been looking at how we can help cities across Europe to think differently about their urban centres,” said Frediani.
“A legacy of this project should have been helping the city of Dundee move from a grey, hard architecture, which we know is a human habitat where we are not thriving, into a greener and bluer adapted city, which cannot just adapt to climate change but help humans in the future flourish alongside more than human nature.”
He added: “We know biodiversity is key to a resilient landscape and this is a globally decreasing metric. If we rub out a botanic garden from a budget line, a space that’s full of diversity and instead turn it into a green public space it will become a place with less diversity over time.
“A public park is planned with amenity grasses and purchases a range of basic ‘clonal’ nursery grown trees, which are very poor from a diversity perspective.”
Frediani said that along with the very real impact on skilled staff and the local community, there was a broader question of how value is measured.
“The question this moment presents is not simply whether a garden in Dundee survives,” he said. “It is whether we still have the institutional will – and the cultural patience – to sustain those forms of knowledge, care and connection that cannot justify themselves on demand but upon which much else quietly depends.
“Because once lost, they are not easily replanted.”
A Dundee University spokesperson said the university was continuing to explore “alternative options’ for the garden’s future.
