The Royal Botanic Garden Nurseries window
The main objective of the botanical garden nurseries is the propagation of local plants, which number approximately 2,531 species, with a focus on rare and endangered species and the species required for the cultivation of plant habitats within the garden site through the propagation of plants in the sexual and vegetative way, and cultivation by cuttings and bulbs, which are collected through field trips In addition to planting seeds stored in the seed bank, the nursery workers document all procedures and transactions necessary to produce seedlings in order to document data and protocols for plant propagation.
At the site of the garden there are three nurseries with a capacity of approximately 60,000 seedlings. The upper nursery is used for seedling germination after being collected directly in the greenhouse, and the lower nursery is used as a site for recycling older plants, watering them and producing organic fertilizer. The nursery currently contains two greenhouses with an estimated capacity of approximately 65,000 seeds, and more than 500 plant species have been propagated until the end of 2020.
The propagation of the plant species required for the rehabilitation of the five habitats that will be rehabilitated has started in the habitats within the garden site since 2017 and is continuing so far for the following plant habitats:
- Habitat of the deciduous oak forest
- Pine forest habitat
- Juniper forest habitat
- freshwater habitat
- Jordan Valley Habitat
One of the goals of the nurseries in the Royal Botanical Garden is to preserve and propagate local endangered plants in several ways, including:
- Propagation by seeds
- Excessive mind
- terminal mind
- Solid mind
- The juicy mind
Seeds are planted after conducting pre-planting treatments, as some seeds need one of the seed treatments in order to break the dormancy phase, and these transactions include:
- scratching
- Soaking in cold water
- Soaking in hot water
- Soaking with sulfuric acid
After one of these transactions is done for the plant species, it is planted in beds inside the greenhouse in order to provide the necessary moisture for germination, and the seeds planted in those beds are followed up, and all information related to plant species is documented, starting from receiving seeds from the seed bank until planting them in natural habitats.
Propagation is done by cuttings after taking a part of the plant that contains at least 3 buds, and the cuttings are cut diagonally from the top and horizontally from the bottom, and the lower cut part is dipped horizontally with rooting hormone so that the rooting hormone is either for soft cuttings or for hard cuttings, according to the type of cuttings and placing them in a pot Cultivation that contains perlite, and the cuttings are monitored periodically until the formation of roots and after the formation of roots, the cuttings are transferred to cultivation containers that contain the cultivation medium approved in the Royal Botanic Garden separately, and the agricultural medium consists of:
- red soil
- Compost
- Bitmoss
Where compost is produced in the nurseries of the Royal Botanic Garden, after building special boxes for the production of organic fertilizer consisting of:
Animal waste (horse manure)
Plant residues collected from the Royal Botanic Garden site
lime substance
So that these components are mixed and placed inside the boxes designated for production and sealed tightly, and they are moved twice a month, and they are ready for use after 6 months.
The nursery workers document all the procedures and transactions necessary for the production of seedlings in order to document the data and protocols for plant propagation. An identification card is used for each plant species in the nurseries of the Royal Botanic Garden. The card contains the scientific name, the common name, the special number, and the protection status of the plant type.
The protection status of the plant type is distributed as follows:
- Critically threatened represented by the color red
- Threatened represented by the color orange
- Vulnerable to extinction represented by the yellow color
- The least important is represented by the dark green colour
- The closest to the threat is represented by the light green color
The seedlings in the nurseries of the Royal Botanic Garden are taken care of on a daily and periodic basis in terms of:
- irrigation
- weeding;
- pruning
- intrusion
- Spraying organic pesticides (according to the disease condition)
In addition to exposing the seedlings to hardening by gradually transferring them from the greenhouse to the outdoor terraces, and then rotating them depending on the age and size of the seedlings.