The ‘winter of discontent’, the world’s first IVF baby, the death of Pope John Paul I: much made the headlines 45 years ago in 1978. But while Britain navigated strikes, listened to The Bee Gees, and headed to the cinema to watch Grease and Superman, the horticultural world was focused on one thing: plant conservation.
It’s not something many gardeners give much thought to. We go to the garden centre, buy plants we like, then enjoy them in our gardens. It’s a well-worn tradition, but it comes with an attendant risk: what happens to those plants if they fall out of fashion or garden centres stop selling them?
Back in 1978, that’s what was worrying Christopher Brickell when he founded the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens, or NCCPG, after a series of conferences addressing the need to conserve the diversity of cultivated plants. The charity later became the more simply
