Who We Are
The Botanic Gardens Education Network (BGEN) promotes and advances the delivery of education in member organisations. We are a specialist support and training network for professionals working in education related to plants and the natural world. The network has more than 200 members, most of whom are educators in botanic gardens and other centres of environmental education in the UK and Ireland. Anyone is welcome to join BGEN, though as a support network, those likely to gain the most benefit are professional biodiversity educators within the UK. You can learn more about our members and our work in the sections highlighted below.
BGEN Committee
BGEN Member Directory
BGEN members represent more than 70 botanic gardens, zoos, arboreta, and other environmental education institutions throughout the UK, Ireland, and other countries around the world. Browse our member institution directory and find out more about the places where BGEN members work.
Partnerships and Initiatives
BGEN has partnered with a number of UK and global initatives to promote excellence in environmental and plant-based education. We believe that education organisations and initiatives are stronger when we partner together and build on one another's strengths. Central to this work is supporting and promoting our members' interests in the policy arena.
Read more below about each of the exciting partnerships and initiatives that BGEN supports and promotes. Additionally, we are always interested in exploring new partnerships and relationships. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to discuss new partnership opportunities.
Growing Schools
BGEN is proud to support the work of Growing Schools.
Growing Schools aims to give all children the opportunity to connect with the living environment, whether it is an inner-city window box or a vast country estate, a school veg plot or a natural woodland. Interacting with living plants and animals provides a very rich, hands-on learning experience in which both formal and informal education can flourish.
Growing Schools focuses on three areas that are accessible to all, at some level, as a context for learning:- Food and farming, including the managed countryside
- Gardens, gardening and green spaces
- Wildlife and the natural environment
For more information, visit www.growingschools.org.uk.
or read the growing schools 2008/09 annual report, growing_.pdf