Plants Have Secrets

A big part of the Glasshouse Restoration project is getting lots more people to enjoy our glasshouses. We really want young people to visit the glasshouses and the Garden. This is why over the next two years we will be doing lots of activities for them. This month we were very excited to work with young people on our Plants have Secrets: digital youth project.

This project gives young people the chance to make a video about how psychoactive plants are used. Psychoactive plants are plants that change the way our brains work. For this project, we partnered with the Octavia Foundation. The Foundation supports people in need from central and west London.

Eight young people came to the Garden for a whole week. They worked with our staff and the team from Octavia Foundation to make their own videos. They learned how to use cameras and how to tell a story through film. They spent a lot of time out in the Garden to get an understanding of what a psychoactive plant is. They found out that not all psychoactive plants are dangerous or illegal. In the tropical corridor, they learned all about coffee and how caffeine is psychoactive. One group chose to make this fact a big part of their video.

The young people will return to the Garden later in the year for a premiere of their films. We will run this project two more times as part of the wider project.