The Sustainability team is excited to announce that Missouri Botanical Garden has been selected to be part of the Plants and Climate Change Education (PLACCE) cohort, an initiative of the United States Botanic Garden and the American Public Gardens Association. Funding and collaboration in this peer learning group will enable the Garden to share one of its greatest resources, the herbarium, with educators and students. Herbaria are libraries of preserved dried plant specimens. The Garden has one of the largest herbaria in the world with over 7.5 million specimens.
The Garden will create a model for utilizing herbarium collections in public education, bridging the gap between specialized resources and public engagement. Herbaria, often inaccessible to K-12 learners and the public, are nevertheless one of the outstanding resources of botanical gardens. While these collections have advanced in making data available, knowing what to do with this information, how to create meaningful educational activities, and accessing collections can be challenging. This project will develop strategies to make herbaria collections more accessible to the public, provide examples to be used as primary resources in educational settings, and build context for engaging learners in seeing observable impacts of climate change through the lens of plants.
(Herbarium collection and storage, photo by Jered Willis)
As part of the PLACCE work, Missouri Botanical Garden is seeking out K-12 grade educators across the Greater St. Louis Region to learn more about how climate change is addressed in the classroom and what resources are needed to do it better. All teachers are welcome to apply, whether they cover climate change currently or not. We want to hear about the successes and barriers to covering this topic.
As a thank you to participants, teachers will receive:
There are two opportunities to participate. Apply using the link below by January 10 for priority registration.
1) Tuesday, February 11, 2025: Dinner at 5 p.m., focus group from 5:30-7 p.m.
2) Monday, February 17, 2025: Breakfast at 8:30 a.m., focus group from 9-10:30 a.m.
If you have questions, please reach out to Maggie at mmccoy@mobot.org.
Apply here