The Future National Gardens Group (FNGG) is inviting professional gardeners to test and help develop a new tool which will ultimately help the UK’s 41 million gardeners to prepare for a changing climate.
The Garden Climate Assessment Tool (GCAT) is a free-to-use risk assessment tool that will measure how different plants may fare in the UK’s projected future climate, helping users to plan resilient planting schemes, ensure robust management plans and protect plant collections.
Building and expanding on the Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens Climate Assessment Tool and developed with Botanic Gardens Conservation International, the GCAT has been adapted for UK gardens and planted landscapes.
It covers trees and other plants, including named garden varieties, and brings together research, gardening knowledge and records from partners’ plant collections. Data from 289 gardens, covering 80,650 plant types, has already been assessed, while the tool currently contains records for more than 100,000 taxa.
Users select a location and plant species to explore how well it may perform under projected climate conditions, based on factors including average annual temperature, winter cold and climate dryness. Drawing on records from both wild and cultivated settings, the tool helps identify climate risks and inform monitoring, planting, replacement and plant-sharing decisions to safeguard important collections.
The FNGG is now inviting professional gardeners, plant collections holders, designers, nurseries and other gardening businesses to trial and help refine the tool before it is made accessible to wider public audiences.
Alistair Griffiths, RHS Director of Science, speaking on behalf of for the Future National Gardens Group said: “After a summer of back-to-back heatwaves and drought, and with many parts of the country now facing exceptionally wet and windy weather, the need to prepare our gardens for a changing climate has never felt more urgent.
“The Garden Climate Assessment Tool will ultimately help gardeners make more informed decisions about the plants they grow, enabling them to create more resilient gardens. By bringing together plant records, expertise and observations from gardens across the UK, we can build a far richer evidence base than any one organisation could achieve alone, helping us better understand how plants are responding to a changing climate. We are now inviting professionals from across the UK’s garden and landscape sectors to help us refine the tool, ensuring it provides gardeners with practical, evidence-based support when it launches to the public.”
The FNGG is a partnership of the UK’s leading horticultural, heritage, and landscape organisations. Collectively welcoming more than 45 million public visitors each year at over 7000 sites, the group shares knowledge, expertise and insight to ensure the UK’s national gardens and cultivated plant collections are valued and protected, today and for future generations.
For more information on the tool and to test it, visit:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/garden-climate-assessment-tool
