This talk and all our lectures are FREE for Friends of the Botanical Gardens to attend. Members of the public are also welcome to join us on payment of £5 at the door on the day. Live talks are held in the Education Centre in the grounds of the Botanical Gardens - easily accessed via the Thompson Road Entrance.

Our resident flora is packed full of remarkable creatures. There are plants that poison predators, fight battles and play mind games with pollinators. We have carnivores and climbers, puppeteers and parasites. Some are giants thousands of years old, while others are tiny pinpricks a millimetre across.

In 2021, Leif Bersweden went on a big botanical adventure around Britain and Ireland with his bike, travelling from Hampshire’s Bluebell woods to the shores of Shetland, to track down our most intriguing and well-known plants, with the people who love them most dearly.

This talk follows him on that journey as he botanises his way through an entire calendar year, meeting our plants, telling their stories and exploring people’s connection to their local flora, and is all about the joy of engaging with nature, the importance of plants for our climate, and celebrating our unbelievable botanical diversity.

Copies of ‘Where the Wildflowers Grow’ will be available for sale at a discounted price after the talk. We hope to offer card sales but cash may be useful!

Leif Bersweden is a writer, botanist and science communicator with a lifelong interest in nature. He grew up in rural Wiltshire where he taught himself how to identify the local flora. Leif recently completed a genetics PhD at Kew Gardens and is the author of The Orchid Hunter (2017) and Where the Wildflowers Grow (published June 2022) which documents his journey around Britain and Ireland on his bike.

Find out more about Leif via Instagram , Twitter, TikTok and his website