This event was to celebrate the birthday of Joseph Banks, one of Britain's most eminent botanists and plant hunters: 270 today!

The activities were designed to give visitors a flavour of being a Plant Hunter:

• Sketching some of our weird and wonderful glasshouse plants in the same way Banks would have done all those years ago.
• Examining some of our herbarium specimens.  Plant hunters have used this method of cataloguing for hundreds of years.
• Making own mini plant presses to take home.
• Looking at some of our Banksia cones, from the Australian Banksia tree named after the Joseph Banks himself.
• Using our cameras to record favourite plants in the Garden and Glasshouses.  The best photos are shown below.

Joseph Banks photograph with kind permission of the Sir Joseph Banks Society.

                                  Jake                                                                        Jake

                           Bethany & Lydia                                                        Bethany & Lydia

                                      Oak                                                                  Oak

                                    Eve, Lucy & Daniel                                                                              Eve, Lucy & Daniel

                                       Sarah & Patrick                                                                                    Sarah & Patrick

Feedback from participants

• Really informative and enjoyable.  Inspired me to dust off and use my old flower press back home.  Thanks.
• My children (6 and 9) enjoyed making the flowerpress and liked taking pictures!  It was great to have something to get out of the house for!  Thank you!  See you again soon.
• It's great, we had fun and hope to join in more activities soon.

Publicity

This event was featured in the Oxford Mail.

Download a copy of the Brilliant Banks event report here.