Caley Lecture – Tuesday 4th October
“University of Dundee Botanic Garden – a 50-year curatorial legacy” – Kevin Frediani.
The University of Dundee Botanic Garden comes of age on 23rd October 2022. The garden at 50 years of age, has matured to become a much-loved local community asset, while its ecologically informed living collections provide a highly valued amenity to the surrounding landscape. A landscape that increasingly attracts and retains a growing number of visitors, who are more and more becoming members and returning through the year to enjoy its ever changing seasonal events and gallery programme.
This talk reflects on 50 years of the gardens curation, as a legacy of its curators, but also a reflection of the changing times of a University Botanic Garden conceived at the end of the 20th Century. A garden of 9.5 hectares with collections of many notable plants from different temperate climes, it is also a garden that reflects the changing perceptions over that passage of time and the curatorial direction that has been forged in response.
This is a talk that will unpick that journey and share an emerging vision for a garden in transition with a new curator at its helms in a time of global change.
Kevin is the Curator of Botanic Garden and Grounds at the University of Dundee where he leads the strategic direction & operational management of an important national collection that facilitates education, conservation and research across many traditional schools of knowledge. He is currently unlocking the whole of the University landscapes potential, through a collaborative ‘living laboratory’ within the University that informs, evidence & further enriches the green-blue infrastructure of the combined campuses with the goal of supporting student, staff and visitor health and wellbeing.
The Caley winter Talks are back and in-person! The talks will be returning to the Lecture Theatre at RBGE once more but we will continue to record them and put them on the website so that those members who cannot make it to RBGE can still enjoy them. All talks will begin at 7.30pm. We do hope that you can join us.
The talks are free and are open to non-members. If you are not a member, we would be grateful if you could make a small donation at the door or perhaps buy a raffle ticket. For those folk who have not attended a lecture at RBGE before, entry is via the main reception: 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR (just down from the East Gate).
