How do you get teenagers to come to public gardens, no less make things interesting once they’re there? These have long been vexing questions.

In the olden (pre texting and MySpace) days, intrepid educators at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden produced an exhibit on plants associated with such teen concerns as birth control and mind-bending substances. (They can do that kind of thing in Merry Ole England without causing bedlam and scaring off funders.)

Now at least two major botanic gardens are betting that GPS technology is just the ticket for this finicky cohort. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has unveiled the “Kew Ranger,” a hand-held GPS unit. The device, which is available for rent, tells teens (as well as technology-averse adults) their exact location in the garden, then displays information about nearby specimens. Meanwhile, in Miami, educators at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden are employing GPS units to get students psyched about plants.

Then there’s the fact that a representative from geocaching.com attended the APGA conference in Pasadena in June. Stay tuned.

Canopy walks at botanical gardens and arboretums are the hottest thing since children’s discovery gardens started appearing everywhere in the 90s. Kew’s new Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway, named after the mining company that helped fund it and designed by the firm that did the London Eye, climbs 59 feet high into a canopy of chestnuts, oaks, and limes, and also takes a dip below ground to explore the subterranean world of tree roots. Another trend alert, at least in England: The design of the canopy walk is based on the Fibonacci Series.

Animal plant gardens have appeared at several zoos and botanical gardens. What seven year old can resist a planting of elephant ear, staghorn fern, lizard tail and the like? Glasshouse Works offers dozens of “zoomorphic plants,” including tapeworm grape and chicken gizzard plant. Eeewww! 

I thought my obsession with treehouses was bad — I’ve been fantasizing about treehouses since I first saw Swiss Family Robinson as a kid — but the design mavens at Inhabitat have really been bitten by the bug. This roundup of their favorite treehouse finds over the past few years ranges from a glowing Japanese lantern-like structure nestled among fir trees on Lake Muskoka, Ontario to two Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic domes linked by a canopy walk.

As I said the other day, every arboretum and botanical garden needs at least one of these awesome arboreal aeries. 

Some of the most spectacular treehouses you’ve ever seen, constructed around the world by a company called Baumraum.

Ian Darwin Edwards asked this question during a presentation at the BGCI congress in Cape Town, South Africa 10 years ago. It was a catchy way of saying that when it comes to capturing the public’s attention, advertisers are veritable Pavarottis while we in the garden world can be pretty tone deaf.

A decade later, it’s still a good question. Public gardens are still trying to find their voice. In the face of massive climate change and mass extinction, we’d better hurry up.

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