THE DREAM GARDEN
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THE DREAM GARDEN
If you want to be happy for a lifetime ,
plant a garden
Although horticulture is a form of culture that has existed They can inspire new ideas for home gardens
for thousands of years, the first botanic gardens were not or provide people with information about the
established until the Renaissance era, or more precisely, in flora of other countries. Botanic gardens interact
the 1540s. Nowadays, there are over 2,500 botanic gardens with society in other ways as well. The domestic
in nearly 150 countries. horticulture industry, for instance, obtains
specialties for production, and diverse botanical
What makes a garden botanic? The plants in a botanic expertise can aid citizens and authorities with plant-
garden are not there just to look pretty; they come with related problems.
information, visible in the form of labels. In addition
to them, a botanic garden maintains a database of In recent decades, the new, melancholy mission
information on when and from where each plant accession of botanic gardens has been to participate in
was acquired, as well as plenty of other data on each saving the plant kingdom. As many as half of the
accession. The plants are carefully identified and the approximately 300,000 plant species in the world
nomenclature is scientific. All plantations have been are in danger of extinction in the coming decades.
mapped, their condition is being monitored, and all More and more species are finding their last safe
changes are regularly recorded in the database. Botanic haven in the plantations and seed bank vaults of
gardens are also an excellent tool for independent study. botanic gardens.
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