Plant Power 2025

Description

'Plant Power’ is an annual event held at the University of Dundee Botanic Garden.

This year, staff at the Garden have worked with the University’s School of Life Sciences, Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science and the James Hutton Institute to create an exciting day of activity focussed on plants. Science activities were:
- Pop-up Medicinal Garden
- Meiosis and Chromosomes
- DNA extraction
- Plants and Pathogens
- 5 barley-related activities covering the themes Healthy Plants, Sustainable Farming, Climate Change, Fertilisers and Genome Improvement
- Forensic Investigations
- Face Painting
- Pond dipping

We were joined by partner organisations as well.

Art and Nature Collective Craft Fair featured ten artists from the collective will have stalls showcasing and selling their works. Two members of the Collective ran the following workshops Paint with plants with artist Jenny Blair and Pause. Look Closer. See Differently. A Mindful Photography Workshop with photographer Kelly McIntyre. There was a Green Gallery Exhibition - Strange Worlds, an exhibition of screen-printed works by Jen McAlinden.

Friends of the Botanic Garden ran their Plant Sale. Maxwell Community Garden talked about Community Gardening in Dundee promoting the types of activities that they do in the garden and how they grow food. There were Bird, Moth and Bat Demos from the Dundee Naturalists.

720 visitors came to the garden. Some feedback from visitors who were asked what they most liked about Plant Power:

- The science experiments/ learning about barley/ the students and organisers attending the stalls- great enthusiasm, very knowledgeable and clearly wanted to be there, the children had the best time.
- The abundance of activities for children of all ages to take part in.
- Accessible and free-flowing. Lots of different engaging points for the kids (and grown-ups) with plenty space to roam and explore too!
- Thank you to all who put time an effort in today's event, it was a huge success in our eyes. The children would love to be back, see you next year!

Additional participants were: Clara Morriss, Karen Brough, Kelly Connor, Joshua Weblin, Charlotte Grech

Period	17 May 2025
Degree of Recognition	Local