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Public Education
KEW LECTURES
LECTURES AT KEW
The Kew lectures will take place in the Jodrell Lecture Theatre accessed via Jodrell Gate on Kew Road. Tickets can be purchased from our office in advance or will be available to buy at the door on the day from 6.30pm (unless sold out).
Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible
Wolfgang Stuppy and Rob Kesseler
Thursday 20 November 7pm
Venue: Kew
Fruit. A wonderful gift from nature indeed but providing us with
an abundant source of food is not the main reason that plants produce them.
As will be revealed, in this illustrated lecture, fruits are part of a much more elaborate plot. Their true nature is concealed in what is buried in their core: their seeds. The key role that fruits and seeds play in the survival of each species explains the manifold dispersal strategies that plants have developed during the course of their evolution. The strategies they pursue, whether they involve wind, water, humans and animals or the plant’s own explosive triggers, are reflected in a plethora of different colours, sizes and shapes. Some are edible, some inedible, and many quite incredible!
Artists too employ diverse strategies for attracting audiences and dispersing images of nature. In the talk Rob Kesseler will reveal the painstaking processes involved in revealing the full lusciousness of fruit
Wolfgang Stuppy is the seed morphologist for the Millennium Seed Bank Project at Wakehurst Place.
Rob Kesseler is a professor at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. In 2001 he was appointed NESTA Fellow at Kew, where he has since been working with microscopic plant material. His work has been shown in museums and galleries in the United Kingdom, Europe and North America.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr. H. Shawdon Charitable Trust
Sarah Raven’s Complete Christmas
Sarah Raven
Thursday 11 December 7pm
Venue: Kew
Come and hear author and BBC Gardeners World presenter, Sarah Raven,
talk about her new book which presents a wealth of ideas on food,
flowers and decorations for the Christmas season. Drawing on her years
of experience in the garden and kitchen creating memorable Christmas seasons
for her family, Sarah’s
ideas combine traditional methods with a fresh, modern
aesthetic.
Sarah Raven, writer, cook, broadcaster and teacher, is the expert on all things to grow, cut and eat from your garden.
Sarah is an inspirational and passionate teacher, running cooking, flower arranging and gardening courses at the school she set up in 1999 at her farm in East Sussex. Sarah is a presenter on BBC Gardeners’ World, she writes for The Daily Telegraph, Country Living Magazine, Gardeners’ World Magazine, Domino Magazine (US) and has been a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and The Food Programme.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr.H. Shawdon Charitable Trust
The Winter Garden
Andrew McIndoe
Thursday 29 January 7pm
Venue: Kew
This illustrated lecture will look at the wonderful variety of
plants that come into their own during winter. Winter flowering shrubs,
structural and colourful evergreens, stems and bark, conifers,
grasses, delicate winter blooms and bulbs. Ideas will also be given on
plant combinations that work in both winter and summer.
Andrew McIndoe is Deputy Managing Director of Hillier, Managing Director of Hillier Garden Centres and Series Consultant for the Hillier Gardener’s Guides.
He has designed the Hillier garden at the Chelsea Flower Show for the past 17 years - and Hillier is holder of the Guinness World Record for an unbroken run of 60 Gold Medals at Chelsea. He is also an experienced and professional broadcaster with TV appearances on BBC Gardeners’ World and other TV shows, and a regular slot on BBC Radio Solent’s Goodlife.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr.H. Shawdon Charitable
Trust
Darwin’s Garden
Michael Boulter
Tuesday 24 February 7pm
Venue: Kew
Five years after returning from his trip around the world on HMS
Beagle, the young Charles Darwin became the owner of Down House in Kent
where he moved his growing family, far away from the turmoil and distractions
of London. He would live there for the rest of his long life and was greatly
attracted to the garden.
In this illustrated lecture, based on the recently published book of the same name, we will learn how Darwin used the garden as his laboratory and how his experiments, conducted over 150 years ago, continue to contribute to the work of others today.
Michael Boulter was previously Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of East London and head of a team analysing Fossil Record 2, the largest database of information on extinct animals and plants. He is the author of Darwin’s Garden and Extinction and currently works at the Natural History Museum. He has been secretary and editor for the International Organisation of Palaeobotany for the past 20 years.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr.H. Shawdon Charitable Trust
Lectures at Wakehurst Place
The Wakehurst Place lectures take place in the Millennium Seed Bank Seminar Room. Tickets can be purchased from our office in advance or will be available to buy at the door on the day from 1.30pm (unless sold out).
Birds and Birdsong
Mike Russell
Thursday 23 October 2pm
Venue: Wakehurst Place
Through the use of slides and sounds, this talk will
look at birdsong and how birds communicate with each other and the outside
world. What messages they are communicating and why they do it and what other
birds do with those messages. It will also include how people relate to birdsong,
the significance it has in our lives and the inspiration we have derived
from it.
Mike Russell is the People and Wildlife Manager for the Sussex Wildlife Trust and has been with them in various guises for the last 23 years. His current role involves organising the Trust's extensive adult courses programme and family based events as well as delivering many of the courses himself. He also leads birdwatching and wildlife holidays for Wildlife Travel, a company set up to support the work of the Wildlife Trusts and is now setting up local wildlife tourism projects in Sussex.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr. H.Shawdon Charitable Trust
Islands
Professor R J Berry DSc, FIBiol, FRSE
Tuesday 17 March 2pm
Venue: Wakehurst Place
In this lecture, based on the recently published New
Naturalist Guide, we will hear about the factors that have moulded the various
fauna and flora of all the islands around Britain and Ireland. Some – like
the Isle of Wight and Anglesey – have a biota very similar to their
nearest big neighbour, albeit without the losses due to introduced pests
and human depredation; others have a depauperate biota and many local forms.
Islands formed an important part of Darwin’s thinking as he refined
his ideas about evolution, which he developed with the help and stimulus
of his friend Joseph Hooker. Hooker himself contributed to an understanding
of island biology through his Antarctic voyage on the Erebus; his 1866 lecture
to the British Association on “Insular
Floras” remains an important summary of the determinants of island
biogeography. Although the British and Irish islands do not have as many
endemics as Hawaii or the Galapagos, some of their species show divergence
and differentiation and demonstrate the processes which have been active
in more isolated groups.
Sam Berry was Professor of Genetics at University College London 1978–2000. He is a former President of the Linnean Society, the British Ecological Society and the European Ecological Federation. Much of his research has been on the genetic factors operating on island populations. He has worked on Skokholm, the Isle of May, Orkney, Shetland, Faroe, Hawaii, and several Antarctic islands. He is the author of three previous volumes in the New Naturalist series: Inheritance and Natural History (1977), Natural History of Shetland (with Laughton Johnston) (1980), and Natural History of Orkney (1988). In 2008 he gave the Hooker Lecture to the Linnean Society on “Hooker and Islands”.
All tickets: £5
This lecture has been generously supported by the Dr. H. Shawdon Charitable Trust
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