Millennium Seed Bank

The Wellcome Trust Millennium Building is home to the Millennium Seed Bank Project. It opened in 2000 and is an integral part of the Wakehurst Place visitor experience, together with the Mansion and gardens.

As well as providing space to store thousands of seed samples in a large underground vault, the building includes advanced seed research and processing facilities, and a state of the art exhibition about seed conservation.

Some of the diversity of UK native flora is shown in the eight exterior parterres, which show habitats from the seashore to the uplands.

Millennium Seed Bank Project

The Millennium Seed Bank Project is an international collaborative plant conservation initiative. This worldwide effort aims to safeguard 24,000 plant species from around the globe against extinction. It has already successfully secured the future of virtually all the UK's native flowering plants

The aims of the Project are to:

• Collect and conserve 10%, over 24,000 species, of the world's seed-bearing flora, principally from the drylands, by 2010. 

• Collect and conserve seeds of the entire UK native seed-bearing flora by 2000. 

• Carry out research to improve all aspects of seed conservation. 

• Make seeds available for research and species re-introduction into the wild. 

• Encourage plant conservation throughout the world by facilitating access to and transfer of seed conservation technology. 

• Maintain and promote the public interest in plant conservation. 

• Provide a world-class facility as a focal resource for this activity.

The UK Programme has already collected seed from over 95% of the UK's native higher plants. This is the first time that any country has underpinned the conservation of its flora in this way.

Continue the tour

Back up to: Millennium Seed Bank Zone

Carry on to: Millennium Seed Bank Exhibition