Two budding United Kingdom scientists — one a diminutive pre-teen, the other just a year older — captivated international delegates at the seventh Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) conference in Durban recently.
Zoe Parfitt (13), and Zoe Barnes (12) — or Zoe P and Zoe B as they’re known — are pupils at Writhlington School in Somerset in the UK. They were invited to the conference to provide hands-on in vitro orchid propagation workshops for educators from some of the world’s leading botanical gardens and other institutions.
The Writhlington Orchid Project has captured the imagination of both the horticultural and teaching worlds. Under the direction of its initiator, teacher Simon Pugh-Jones, it involves propagating rare UK orchids and tropical orchid species for conservation. Its success as both a model for conservation and as an exemplar enterprise is garnering international acclaim and a slew of prizes and awards.
Pugh-Jones, along with Dr Lauren Gardiner from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, accompanied the girls to South Africa.
On the third day of the conference, the girls took over Dr Margaret Appleton’s micropropagation laboratory at the Durban Botanic Gardens for a “show and tell” demonstration of the highest order.
The young experts guided a laboratory full of botanists, horticulturalists and other educators from London, Moscow, Sydney, Pennsylvania, Paris and San Diego, among others, through the intricacies of sterilising, sowing, rinsing and replanting the minuscule seeds.
While Zoe B, in an oversized laboratory coat reaching down to her ankles, struggled to stifle a few early-morning yawns — the consequence of a busy itinerary that included field trips — her professional demeanour and confidence, matched by that of Zoe P, had the educators enthralled.
They described the hazards and challenges associated with working with ethanol and flames; how to avoid introducing fungal spores, and they demonstrated techniques to deal with different seed behaviours.
“Since this year’s conference theme is ‘Action learning: places, spaces and partnerships for biodiversity and human wellbeing’, it was an ideal time to introduce the orchid project,” said Gardiner.
It is a success story in many ways, including exemplifying “education through real conservation”, she said.
The two visiting demonstrators are enthusiastic about horticulture, micropropagation and orchids. From what was once a “poorly performing rural school”, Writhlington School has, in 20 years, become a thriving, oversubscribed institution.
“From just 22% of students gaining 5A-C GCSEs — the education benchmark — in the 1980s, the school achieved 98% in 2009,” said Gardiner. And winning £26-million (about R322-million) in government investment for the school’s overall improvement is going towards building a new campus. In pride of place, will be a 200m2, state-of-the-art greenhouse.
Pugh-Jones says the school’s orchid project gained its significant credibility “through its refusal to dumb down its conservation and science aims”.
By linking horticulture and science with business and enterprise, the orchid project has been integrated into the school’s science curriculum. Money raised from orchid sales funds student trips to exotic destinations like the Himalayas, Brazil and Indo-China.
Learners see orchids in their native habitats, work with local conservationists and set up links with schools in distant lands. And, along the way, they complete their exam coursework.
While the high profile, high value of the species clearly plays a key role in the success of the project, “most important is that pupils learn exemplary scientific techniques and about the need for conservation”, says Pugh-Jones.
Of the 28 000 known orchid species worldwide, about one-quarter are estimated to face a significant threat of extinction.
Writhlington pupils have an opportunity to understand how their studies are applied and how botanic gardens around the world work, while making cross-curriculum links “and gaining vast interpersonal and transferable skills along the way”, says Pugh-Jones.
Since the school set up its laboratory in 1998, Kew Gardens has contributed both equipment and expert advice, and students enjoy regular trips to the Kew laboratories.
Pugh-Jones says the project can be easily replicated at other schools, including those with minimal resources. The school is keen to form links with South African schools. It has one partner school in Cape Town already, as a result of Writhlington’s participation in the 2007 Cape Town Flower and Leisure Show, and the first steps have been taken to form a partnership with a Durban school.
Gardiner said: “All you need is a little know-how and lots of enthusiasm. You don’t need lots of money, technical skills or high-priced equipment.
“Science, horticulture and conservation in schools and botanic gardens can be exciting, dynamic and innovative. But it works most effectively when real techniques and objectives are used,” he says.
“Partnerships with botanic gardens and other organisations help projects get started, build momentum and enthusiasm, provide context and experience and engage the wider community.
“While not all students will become horticulturists or scientists, they will all have had significant experience in the conservation value of plants. It is a programme of ‘conservation in action’, and the educational trips have brought home to the students the realities of things like deforestation and climate change.”
Zoe B, however, is set on becoming a plant scientist. “I want to be in the bush,” she says. “That’s just the best, being outdoors and finding new plants.”
The girls updated their school and members of the Royal Horticultural Society — from whom they received a scholarship to attend the conference — on their visit, through daily blog entries.
Highlights have been learning about medicinal plant propagation at the Durban Botanic Gardens, a “bunny chow” dinner — a local curry speciality, eaten by hand from a half-loaf of bread — and exploring the Vernon Crookes Nature Reserve.
“The first orchid we managed to spot was a Satyrium longicauda. It was growing on the edge of a stream in boggy ground. Pugh-Jones says this is the most dramatic terrestrial orchid he has ever seen growing in the wild. I was pretty impressed too,” wrote Zoe P.
Not nearly as impressed, though — as one delegate confided — as the conference was by the schoolgirls who took a botanical workshop to new heights. —