Kew Gardens Profile - Sunday Times - April 2008

Most mornings before breakfast, Professor Stephen Hopper and his wife walk in the gardens around the West London house which comes with his job.

But these are no ordinary gardens. The 56-year-old Australian botanist became Director of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 2006 and his stroll can take him anywhere in its 300 acres.

Kew is the popular public showcase for a vast root system of lesser-known but vital scientific work there and at Wakehurst Place in Sussex – home to the Millennium Seed Bank. Kew’s scientists work globally and it also has a small outpost in Mozambique manned by six local people. “It is one of the world’s richest but least explored places for plant species.”

When Hopper started the £129,000 a year job he says: “I had a sense of awe and found it humbling to be involved in a place so rich in history and global reach. There are around 700 staff - about a third involved in science, so it is one of the plant science powerhouses of the world.

The scientific work is focused at the Jodrell laboratories in Kew and at the Seed Bank where it is aimed to have seeds from 25 percent of the world’s plants in storage by 2020.

“The challenges for Kew are to help improve the quality of life by focusing on what plants can do for people in general and what they can do in terms of some of the environmental challenges we all face. That involves some organisational changes and new partnerships and ways of doing things.”

Attending to those partnerships meant meeting a senior BBC executive this week to explore ways of increasing public awareness of environmental issues. Hopper also travelled to Cambridge for a scientific conference. His weekend was spent reading about Darwin whose 200th anniversary coincides with Kew’s 250th birthday. Big events are planned.

Hopper grew up in the semi desert landscape of Western Australia and a school trip into the wild made him realise he wanted to work outdoors. He trained first as a marine biologist but switched over to botany. He still spends a month a year in the field.

Scientific and management skills must now be matched by political canniness. “We have an active role in exploring the world of plants and funghi, demonstrating clearly their value and importance and engaging in the political process to get the world to turn the corner and stop this crazy behaviour of ever more destruction of wild vegetation.”

“Kew’s role is not blatantly political. It is about ensuring that the underpinning science is conducted to really help policy makers take informed decisions.”

“I have to be optimistic. I went to a conference on sustainability and indigenous people and an elder from an Native American nation said the most important thing we can give to young people is hope. We really need to think of what can be done and engage people. All good things start with individuals.”