From 13th-26th November 36 staffs from 21 of China’s Botanical Gardens have been attending a horticulture training course at Kunming Botanic Garden, as well as at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. This course had been arranged by the Chinese Union of Botanical Gardens (CUBG), with the aim of raising horticulture capacity throughout China’s Botanical Gardens.
Totally the training course has 96 academic hours in 13 days, which was comprised by 7 subjects , commonly theory course in the morning, practice in the afternoon and discussion in the evening.
Two staffs of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), namely Leigh Morris, RBGE’s Associate Director of Horticulture and Martyn Dickson, RBGE's Arboriculture Supervisor, travelled to Kunming to teach 4 subjects of the CUBG course, including Propagation methods, Pruning and training woody plants, Planting techniques, and Maintenance & aftercare. Prof. CHEN Xiuhong from Southwest University of Forestry Garden teaches the subject on “Garden Plant Disease and Pest, and the biological controls”. Prof. SUN Weibang from Kunming Botanical Garden trains the subject on “Conservation (for some extremely threatened plant species) Based Plant Configuration/Arrangement in the Garden, in Particularly Emphasizing an Integration of Conservation Biology, Ornamental Horticulture and Landscaping.” From Nov. 24 to 26, students travelled to Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden to learn the use and management of big Horticulture machines. All are very important to horticulture management. Many participants have experience in their own botanical garden, but the horticultural courses set a high standard, and expressed that they had learned a lot of theory and practical experiences from the course, which will greatly help their future work. When they go back their own garden, they will teach other staffs what they had learned in the courses.
Three excellent students will be selected to send for Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to study Horticulture next year.
Prof. CHEN Xiuhong teaching the pest and disease controlling
Pruning
Learning seed propagation
Prof. SUN Weibang teaching plant conservation
learning the use and management of big horticulture machines
