Plants, You and Belize Botanic Gardens

All day, every day you benefit from the existence of plants. You might be aware of some of the benefits such as food, medicines and building materials, but plants are also up to all kinds of things that we don't pay much attention to. For example, at this very instant, plants are making the oxygen that you need to breathe. While you search for your socks, plants regulate water cycles, providing safe drinking water. As you sit looking up random websites like this one, plants are out there removing toxins from our environment (possibly those created by manufacturing your computer). Without being asked they prevent erosion and even go so far as to help regulate the carbon cycle, for a human friendly climate.

They also offer unquantifiable rewards for people by simply exisitng, such as the enjoyment we get when reading about trees from places we'll never see.

It takes more than just a few species of plants to make all this stuff possible. Plants rely on their relationships with other plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and protists to maintain healthy populations. These combinations form ecosystems and perform the functions that maintain the balance of life on earth.

All the variety of life on earth is called biodiversity and the health of plant biodiversity is directly related to our human well being.

Here at Belize Botanic Gardens plants are what we are all about. Our job is to inspire you to appreciate plants. Our hope is that you will consider them as you make decisions each day, so that they can keep on doing all that they do for us.

The mission of Belize Botanic Gardens is to protect the floral biodiversity of Belize by existing as an information resource for the community, government, industry and science and to be a place of beauty for all visitors to enjoy.

We also aim to cultivate, promote, research and enable the research of tropical flora and its conservation with an emphasis on our native species and their habitats.

Take a look around our website, using the tabs on the left and above, to find out more about the Belize Botanic Gardens and the plants of Belize. For the latest goings on at the gardens, be sure to check out our news section. If you would like to visit us look here to see where we are and what you can do at Belize Botanic Gardens.