Lessons from Lotusland: Gardens in conversation – Ukrainian Botanic gardens

Join us for Lessons from Lotusland, our ongoing series of virtual lectures.  
Get an inside glimpse into the Garden, the collections, its operations and its creators.  
Be sure to have your conversation questions ready for the Q&A.

Lessons from Lotusland
Healing Ukraine – Botanic Gardens in a Time of War, a Model of International Collaboration
Wednesday, January 29
12:00 – 1:00PM PST

This timely webinar is about Ukrainian botanical gardens and their critical role during the ongoing war with Russia. The webinar will be led by Tony Allison, Board President of Partnerships for Nature, a US non-profit organization that works closely with Ukrainian botanical gardens, and will feature Andriy Prokopiv, Director of Lviv University Botanical Garden in Ukraine.

Since the Russian invasion in early 2022, Ukraine’s botanical gardens have been serving as centers of respite, recovery, environmental education, and nature healing.   As a model for international collaboration, leaders from three Ukrainian gardens will describe their current focus on Therapeutic Horticulture, utilizing US expertise to assist the traumatized population of their country, including veterans and refugee families. Ukrainian botanical garden leaders will provide vivid updates about their gardens and their work, and will discuss their productive collaborations with US and UK partners. The webinar will conclude with a question and answer session, and will explain how you can support these efforts.

Organizations featured in this webinar:

Partnerships for Nature
Lviv University Botanical Garden
Kryvyi Rih Botanical Garden National Academy of Sciences
Odesa University Botanical Garden

Participants

Andriy Prokopiv
Andriy is a native of Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine.  He holds a PhD in botany and is a professor of biology at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv.  Since 1998 Andriy has served as the Director of Lviv’s Ivan Franko National University Botanical Garden, one of the largest and oldest botanical gardens in the country.  In 2019 Andriy was awarded the title of Honored Environmentalist of Ukraine – a state award.  Since 2018 Andriy has led the collaboration of Ukraine botanical gardens with their overseas counterparts, including with botanical gardens in the US.

Tony Allison
Tony was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and throughout his career has been engaged with the region’s unique natural environment.  Tony worked for many years for Washington Park Arboretum and Mountains to Sound Greenway in Seattle, where he developed curriculum and led classroom and field lessons.  In 2010 Tony founded a program of international environmental education exchanges between partner organizations in the United States and the former Soviet Union.  He is the Board President and a co-founder of Partnerships for Nature, a non-profit organization based in Washington State.