Neither common nor garden: The garden as a refuge for threatened plant species

An increasing number of plant species are being lost to the world primarily as a result of massive levels of degradation to wild habitats, and in a smaller number of cases through inappropriate trading. A handful of these extinctions have been prevented, or perhaps delayed, through cultivation in gardens and nurseries (Melville, 1970). In a well-stocked garden-centre the amateur horticulturist can purchase a number of species now extinct in the wild. These species survive as genetic fragments of the diversity originally present in the lost wild population. This paper, through a series of case studies, discusses the ambivalent relationship between the horticulturist and species conservation.