A GALLOWAY garden is to play host to a new range of plants following an international expedition.
Two members of staff from the Logan Botanical Garden have just returned from a three week trip to the mountains near Hanoi in Vietnam.
And they have brought back endangered species which are to be planted in Logan’s grounds.
It was the team’s first trip to Vietnam since 2019 and was organised in partnership with the Institute of Ecology Biological Resources in Hanoi.
The recently returned travellers say their efforts are vital to ensure that very rare plants have a chance of survival, as curator Richard Baines said: “When you ask most people, we know what the climate of Vietnam is, but it is also tropical and subtropical, the areas above 2000 metres are very temperate. And so things like rhododendrons, magnolias, camellias, all these sort of things, thrive and above 2000 metres the actual climate is very similar to that at Logan. And so that’s why the plants do so well here.
“If only it was a walk in the park. You know, a lot of these mountains are very treacherous. That is steep, arduous. You know, you see lots of creepy, crawly, stinging caterpillars as different leeches cling on to you every time you cross a river, or fall from the trees.
“So in total we’ve made 324 collections. So there’s a lot of information out which is really useful. If we don’t go out there now and collect seed from these specimens many of these specimens in the near term future will disappear.”
