Why Conserve Garden Plants?

While our botanic gardens have a limited capacity to maintain all of the plant species available in Australia (whether native, exotic or cultivated) and our commercial nurseries are required to maintain desirable and easily propagated and cultivated fashionable plants, you – as a home gardener, plant collector or specialist - have the ability to play a vital role in the conservation of our garden plants.

If you have filled a garden space with cultivars derived from species around the world, your role in maintaining the diversity of our plant life has already been recognised by conservation organisations worldwide. Your enthusiasm for our plant life, including the historically significant, rare and unusual is integral to their conservation.  

So why conserve our garden plants? Of an estimated 400,000 global plant species, only about 70,000 are currently used medically. Scientists are continually discovering beneficial chemical components in previously untested plant species for an increasingly wide range of uses. The loss of any of our plant species and their older and less fashionable cultivars inevitably reduces the plant world's ability to not only develop disease resistant genes but also give us time to fully understand and appreciate the value of their components.  In the meantime, the genetic diversity of our plant life directly affects our planet’s ability to sustain life in all its forms.  

With the enormous consequences for the loss of a projected two thirds of the world’s plant species by the end of the 21st century, including the extinction of our own historically significant cultivars, the importance of gardening enthusiasts collectively registering and recording their efforts in developing and maintaining plant collections is critical. The GPCAA’s National Plant Collections Register™ has been established to provide a transparent scientific and horticultural pathway for significant plants held in all types of plant collections held in Australia.