On March 24, the participants of our 45th UNEP/UNESCO/BMUV International Postgraduate Course on Environmental Management for Developing Countries (EM45) went on excursion to Forest Park Tharandt. Participants Rehab Ahmed and Alkhansaa Saber from Sudan kindly prepared a description of their field trip:
“The Forest Botanical Garden, is a botanical garden maintained by the Dresden University of Technology. Within the whole area of the botanical garden, plants are labeled with their scientific name and natural distribution. It contains geographically arranged sections of plants from Asia, North America etc. The Botanical Garden contains approximately 10,000 plant species from every climate zone and from a wide range of geographical regions.
We started walking from border part of the garden accompanied by Dr. Pietzarka and we stopped beside Heinrich Cotta statue, in 1811 he established the first oldest private forestry school worldwide, later it became a forestry college, he developed sustainable forests management methods. Now the botanical garden is a part of the faculty of environmental science, Technical university of Dresden. In 19th century, Cotta invited foreign students from different countries all over the world such as Japan, France, Indonesia, Russia, China, Finland and Spain, to develop forest management worldwide. He led science at that times, he met Alexander von Humboldt and other natural scientists.
We stopped beside the Champion tree it’s about 200 years old. And it’s the only one species in Germany, and its extension species in North America.
The scientific collection of plant species in the garden has about 3200 species and variety of woody plants. Native species, invasive species and endangered species, for the purpose of education for students in forestry management, and other related disciplines, and conservation of biodiversity and genetic diversity.
Also one of the most important topic provided by botanic garden is to introduce the concept of sustainability for children as target groups to increase their awareness about sustainability in simple and great way.
Then we walked around the garden in 500 meters and we stopped in area with about 3 hectares. Native species is dominant in this area, it is left to develop semi natural and it is used for timber production.
Then we crossed the bridge which is connecting the two parts of garden, American part and historic part of garden, then we walked between trees and we found varieties of trees with age 50 to 70 years. Then we climbed the artificial rocky mountain, it was really impressive picture from the top of mountain to see all the surrounding. The botanical garden is source of pleasure and inspiration for its visitors.”
by Rehab Ahmed and Alkhansaa Saber, Sudan