Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria’s “Botany Brain Camp” to explore connection between plants and the brain.

To celebrate Brain Awareness Week, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria’s Dr Meg Hirst and Georgia Warren will team up with Dr Bridgette Semple and Dr Loretta Piccenna from the Department of Neuroscience at Monash University to deliver the first ever “Botany Brain Camp”, an exploration of the connection between plants and the brain.

In this 2-hour tour around Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, these scientists will be swapping their lab coats for activewear to navigate the hemispheres, lobes and cerebellum using the Gardens as a brain map.

Topics to be explored include how much we really see in the plant world, the parts of the brain that control our visual content, movement, speech, thinking, emotions, and behaviours, and how can plants and garden design help us retrieve our memories and lower our stress levels.

Botany Brain Camp is the next evolution of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria’s Botany Boot Camp – an opportunity for people to put on some activewear and learn “Botany 101” while on a brisk walk around Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. The program was developed by Dr Meg Hirst, Postdoctoral Fellow - Seed Science, together with Georgia Warren, Landscape Architect to address “plant blindness”, which is a human inability to see or notice plants in one's everyday life.

 

Event details:

Botany Brain Camp

Saturday, 18 March 2023, 10:30am. 2 hours.

Price: $30

Meet at the Visitor Centre, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

 

Presented by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in partnership with Monash University (Department of Neuroscience, Central Clinical School)

 

To book, visit: https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/melbourne-gardens/what-s-on-melbourne/botany-brain-camp/