- Lead scientist
- Dr Andrew Salisbury, RHS
- Start date
- 1997
- Keywords
Biodiversity, Recorder 6, wildlife, wild flowers, RHS Gardens, Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP)
- Benefits to gardeners
A database of the native and naturalised fauna and flora found in the RHS gardens at Wisley, Surrey, Hyde Hall, Essex, Rosemoor, Devon and Harlow Carr, North Yorkshire will play a greater role in promoting the wildlife value of RHS gardens and informing management decisions.
- The problem
With wildlife (biodiversity) in mind, the challenge for RHS gardens is to encourage, record, preserve and promote biodiversity, without compromising garden design, innovation or management.
RHS gardens support a wide range of wildlife and native plants and a digital record of this is maintained on Recorder 6 software. The RHS has been using Recorder since 1997 to centralise records of native and naturalised fauna and flora from all RHS owned properties. The database contains more than 44,000 records spread over all four RHS gardens. Records date back to a record of the Brimstone butterfly from the Wisley estate in 1891, twelve years before Wisley Garden was donated to the RHS.
RHS gardens support rare and uncommon plants and animals and over 100 UK BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) species have been recorded. These include the Stag beetle (Lucanus cervus), Red-tailed Carder bumblebee (Bombus ruderarius), Bird’s-nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis), Copse bindweed (Fallopia dumetorum), Early meadow grass (Poa infirma) and Spring vetch (Vicia lathyroides) at Wisley Garden; the Pearl-bordered fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne), Otter (Lutra lutra), Water germander (Teucrium scordium) and a lichen (Usnea articulata) at Rosemoor Garden; the Brown hare (Lepus europaeus) and Turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) at Hyde Hall Garden and the Lesser redpoll (Carduelis cabaret) at Harlow Carr.
- Approach
Use of Recorder 6 is being promoted across all RHS gardens to provide a centralised database of native and naturalised biodiversity in RHS gardens.
New users are being trained to use the software to access and add records.
Records held on Recorder 6 are passed to local (e.g. county biological record centres) and national (e.g. National Biodiversity Network) organisations.
- Further information
National Biodiversity Network
Recorder 6 software
Biological Records Centre
UK Biodiversity Action Plan
The RHS is keen for data it holds to be used and would like to collaborate in research. Email us at Advisory_Entomology@RHS.org.uk if you would like to use RHS data for research.
If you have visited one of the RHS gardens and would like to report a wildlife sighting please email us at Advisory_Entomology@RHS.org.uk, with details of what you saw and where and when you saw it, plus any other comments on the sighting.