Building a New Image

Jun 22, 04:56 AM

Current Headlines: By Abbott, Jez

KEVIN LAMB, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL BOTANIC GARDEN OF WALES Kevin Lamb wants to change many things, not least the unflattering stereotype of people working in horticulture, by which he means torn sweaters, beards and more beards.

The recently appointed director of the National Botanic Garden of Wales is unhappy about the industry's dowdy image and reckons he's perfectly placed to help rewrite the script.

Lamb is honing a five-year corporate plan for the garden but is keeping schtum until its publication in June. It's one of the world's newest botanic gardens and has the kind of youthful, tech- savvy image needed to help airbrush out those dodgy jumpers.

His big idea for the seven-year-old garden in south-west Wales includes a visitor centre humming with interactive technology. He wants a hyper-dynamic website and unlimited public access to 240ha of fabulous landscape in Llanarthne. Carmarthenshire.

But he needs money, and needs it fast. Lamb wants to develop the garden into an educational exemplar despite a funding crunch over the garden's future three years ago. And he can't overstress how crucial it is for him to succeed.

"Misconceptions about horticulture and science are extraordinary, and that's part of the challenge of a modern botanic garden," he says. "We must get the message across that horticulture, in its broadest sense, has life-anddeath relevance."

Take it from him. most people are oblivious to flora. Lamb talks of "plant blindness" - how many times, he asks, do people have to look at a landscape or safari shot before they notice the green stuff.

"There's a huge job to be done and a massive responsibility for botanic gardens and horticultural institutions to change the public's attitude. Horticulture really does make the world go round and taking it for granted could be lethal.

"It holds the key to climate change and food, biofuel and the role - if any of genetic modification. Horticulture is at the heart of the debate, so the fuddyduddy image of gardeners with beards, wellies and torn sweaters is something we must change."

And now. he feels, is a great time to start while the garden retains an afterglow of the public admiration that so energised its launch in 2000. A soon-tobe-opened tropical glasshouse has sustained interest in the botanic garden.

His corporate plan focuses on "four pillars": bolstering the science and conservation programme: improving education for all age groups across Wales with a network of "outreach" centres: and fostering closer public engagement.

The forth pillar is crucial to fattening up the coffers at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Improved attractions will bump up visitor numbers by around 80.000 a year, hopes Lamb. This will nudge up revenues and help pay for all that interactive technology.

Unlike other Millennium Commission projects, based on grossly optimistic annual visitor projections, his 200.000 turnstile target is definitely on. he insists. The site is "outstanding", with woodland, prairie planting a "necklace" of lakes around formal gardens and the world's largest single-span glasshouse.

You don't have to be a horticulturist to enjoy it - and Lamb isn't. But conjuring up winning strategies and revenue streams calls for business acumen, and this he has in abundance from corporate stints in selling and marketing.

"The advantage of having a non-horticultural background is that you can take a dispassionate view of what must be done to run an organisation with many focuses. And it's one with nowhere near the public funding enjoyed by museums and galleries.

"But I have always been passionate about the environment. As a child, I wanted to run a zoo, and I'm pretty much there. I'm tending plants instead of animals, which is not a bad achievement when you set up your stall aged five."

In the 33 years since then, Lamb has worked as a business manager for bird charity RSPB and has sold products including welding gas and party novelties.

"You realise how soulless life can become when you are selling something with very limited relevance," he says of the party poppers and silly hats. "The contrast between them and a botanic garden is worlds apart. But plants are such a crucial measure of what's really important to life on this world."

Jez Abbott

CV

1987-1990 Graduates in economics and political history and does an Open University MBA

1990-1998 Joins British Oxygen Company to sell and market welding gases to scrap merchants and helium to leisure businesses, followed by a stint at a US-based consumer-products company.

1998-2002 Business manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

2002-2007 Divisional director of At-Bristol. a science-based visitor attraction

2007 Director of National Botanic Garden of Wales

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. May 31, 2007

(c) 2007 Horticulture Week. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.