Botany bay, in the north-west corner of England, is the most remote and inaccessible part of the UK.
It is home to only one species of fish: the redback, which has a unique, round, long tail that’s similar to that of a catfish.
In the 1960s, a small group of fishermen called the “Botany Bay Fishermen’s Association” (Bafs) started an effort to save the bay.
They were successful in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, they launched the Bafs Botany Garden, which became the centrepiece of a series of botanical gardens in the bay that now provide habitat for more than 50 species of flora and fauna.
“Botanists from all over the world come here to study the flora and wild life that live in this area,” says Andrew Gough, the BAF’s botanist.
“It’s a very important area for all of us, for both local communities and the rest of the world.”
The gardens are managed by a partnership between the British government and the Botany Foundation.
This year, the Botanic Gardens Trust was set up, and the gardens are now home to more than 100 species of plants, including the most-studied of them all: the “shrub-tailed grassland”, which is one of the few grasses in the world that can be grown in the Botanical Gardens Trust gardens.
“The trees are a beautiful sight, with long, beautiful, almost flowering stems, with lots of beautiful colour and a lot of colour,” says Gough.
“I’ve only had a few years to see them, so it’s been really exciting.”
It’s a beautiful view, but the reality of Botany is that there’s not much in the way of natural beauty.
The bay is home not just to the Redbacks, but also to a range of other species of algae, including bryophytes, that make up a huge portion of the ecosystem.
Bafsa and the other botanical communities in the botanical garden are managed under the umbrella of the BFA, and all the gardens use a “natural resource assessment” approach to ensure the natural resource that is in the area is protected and that there is no impact to the local environment.
That’s why there are no artificial lights, and because there are only two roads that link the gardens to each other.
“There’s no road between the gardens,” says Michael Gough of the Botanist’s Association.
“We’re only on the main road, the road to the Botological Gardens Trust, and there’s no footpath, there’s just no path.
So it’s just very hard to find.”
It takes three days to travel to the garden, and then another three to get to the gardens.
It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to go there, and how people could justify spending their time there, but for Gough the appeal of the botanic gardens lies in the unique environment that they provide.
“If you think about it, it’s a place where you can go and see what’s in the Bay of Islands, it has such a beautiful environment, it doesn’t have that very big scale of industrial development, which is the reason why the Botane Foundation is so important,” he says.
“In a way, it is really a refuge.
The Botanic Garden Trust is a non-profit organisation, but it’s run entirely by volunteers. “
So there’s a sort of feeling of community there.”
The Botanic Garden Trust is a non-profit organisation, but it’s run entirely by volunteers.
They’re funded by donations from the public and businesses, and are currently working to build the Botatic Gardens Trust.
The gardens have a history dating back to the 16th century.
The botanists were appointed to help preserve the Bay’s flora and other natural resources, and it’s these natural resources that Gough says they’re currently protecting.
“They have to preserve the biodiversity, and their gardens are the best way to do that,” he explains.
“Because it’s not just a collection of plants and flowers, they have all these wonderful species that are in there, including many rare species.”
As a result of their conservation work, the Bay is now one of Britain’s most biodiverse regions.
“When we were in the 1950s and 1960s we knew very little about the flora, and now, when we’re coming back to it now, we’ve got an appreciation for it,” he adds.
“But I still have a great appreciation for the biodiversity in the ecosystem, and I’m trying to preserve it in that way.”
“There are two main ways to do this,” says the Bfa’s botanicist.
The first is to help develop an understanding of the ecological and cultural context in which the area exists.
“By doing that, we’re trying