Gardens of Agricultural Biodiversity

From the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre, news of the ethnobotany garden. Dr Francis Ng reports that the half-hectare garden, which he designed, is flourishing, and that eventually he hopes to have more than 500 species — including Musa lokok, a previously unknown banana species — used by the local people on hand to study. The garden is close to the Orang Utan Centre at Semengok and has already been visited by schoolchildren. Eventually, Dr Ng says, tourists will be able to visit. Gardens of useful plants strike me as an excellent way to promote the virtues of agricultural biodiversity in a local context. I know of a couple, at Nabk in Syria and the Potato Park near Cusco, Peru, but there must be others.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *