UK Zoo Becomes First in Nation to Achieve Botanical Garden Status

Chester Zoo has been granted official recognition as a botanic garden of international importance by a leading global plant conservation body.

The wildlife attraction, which cultivates hundreds of plant species from Britain and around the world — many facing extinction — is the first zoo in the UK to receive accreditation from Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI).

Philip Esseen, the zoo’s head of plants, said the honour would strengthen its conservation efforts. He noted that safeguarding endangered flora comes with a duty to protect vulnerable species, breed them for survival and share knowledge with other institutions.

BGCI inspectors evaluated the zoo’s work across education, sustainability, scientific research and conservation before granting the status.

Alongside its landscaped gardens open to the public, the site maintains thousands of rare plants behind the scenes for study and preservation, including five National Plant Collections — part of a UK initiative to prevent important cultivated species from disappearing.

Nursery specialist Richard Hewitt said some specimens under the zoo’s care are now scarcely found anywhere else. Among them are three species native to a remote island in the Madeiran archipelago that have largely vanished from other botanical collections. Seeds for the plants were entrusted to the zoo by Madeira’s authorities to help secure their future.

One of these, Musschia isambertoi, is close to extinction in the wild after the destruction of its natural habitat and has never successfully produced seeds outside its native environment, he said.

The conservation charity also plays a role in restoring threatened British flora, including the endangered black poplar tree, through propagation and replanting projects.

Patricia Malcolm of BGCI said the zoo’s extensive contributions to plant conservation earned it recognition as one of only two institutions in Europe to hold Conservation Practitioner status — underlining its growing influence in the global effort to protect endangered plant life.