Meeting of Baltic Botanic Gardens in Kaunas

On September 8–9, 2023, the meeting of the Baltic Botanic Gardens was held at the Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) Botanical Garden in Kaunas, Lithuania, where representatives from the Botanical Gardens of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland participated.

During the meeting, the representatives of each botanic garden presented the updates of their gardens, changes in plant collections, and new activities: Urve Sinijarv, the manager of the Tallinn Botanical Garden, spoke about their organization’s involvement in the activities of Tallinn as the European Green Capital. Ludmila Vishnevska, the representative of the Latvian National Botanical Garden, presented the new education center’s mission and activities. The director of the VMU Botanical Garden, Dr. Nerijus Jurkonis, ran through the rich history of the centennial botanical garden in Kaunas.

After the presentation part, participants of the meeting were invited to visit the collections of the VMU Botanical Garden, guided by dr. Arūnas Balsevičius, prof. Remigijus Daubaras, prof. Ona Ragažinskienė, where they continued discussions about today’s challenges in collecting, preserving, and presenting plant collections to the public.

On the same days, the VMU Botanical Garden, celebrating its centenary, organized the International Dahlia Show, where Lithuanian breeders and botanical gardens from Lithuania and Latvia demonstrated dahlia varieties. In total, visitors could admire more than 700 varieties, from which the most beautiful dahlia of the audience was chosen by voting—this year it was the variety ‘Fleurel’—blooming with massive white flowers and created by the Dutch breeder Lans-de Boer in 1997.