Tourism and the Great Botanical Gardens Of The World – Winter Garden Lecture Series

Online Registration is Closed

The Elizabeth Park Conservancy and the Pond House Cafe presents its’ Winter Garden Lecture Series.  Join us for a very special presentation from Dr. Richard Benfield, author of Garden Tourism.  

This lecture includes a buffet lunch.

TOURISM AND THE GREAT BOTANIC GARDENS OF THE WORLD

Garden Visiting in America is more popular than visits to Disneyland and Disneyworld combined and in Great Britain garden visiting is the third most popular activity for overseas tourists ahead of visiting museums and historic sites. What makes garden visiting so desirable? In this talk Dr. Richard Benfield, author of the new best-selling book Garden Tourism, will take us through five continents and five thousand years of Great Botanic Garden establishment and development to see what made them … and still makes them so special and so popular. Dr. Benfield will have copies of Garden Tourism available at $60 for purchase by cash or check only.

Dr. Richard W. Benfield is Professor of Geography at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut where he teaches Human Geography, Russia, The European Union and many of the courses in the department’s tourism track.

His current research interests are in biogeography, particularly garden tourism, and the use of tourism as a conservation tool through the great botanic gardens of the world. He has also published extensively and spoken widely on the geography of Floriculture.

In total he has travelled in over 115 countries and seen the botanic gardens and other private gardens in just about them all. In 2010 he traveled to the parks and gardens of South Africa, the Middle East, China and the Valley of Flowers, India where he researched the intersection of garden tourism and conservation.

He is a much sought after speaker for local garden and nature clubs and Botanic Garden Conservation International, for whom he just finished presenting their plenary address at their conference in Mexico City and for whom he spoke at the World Botanic Garden conference in Dunedin, New Zealand. This summer he travelled to South Korea to view Korean Festival Gardens, conservation of plants in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and from there he travelled to Australia to speak in all five major cities on garden tourism. In 2013, his book Garden Tourism was published by CABI Press, Abingdon, England.