Press Release

Students at work on their DNA and pollen testing

A dozen young people from across West Sussex spent Saturday at Wakehurst Place helping to solve a mystery at Kew’s country garden near Haywards Heath.

It’s all part of Kew’s efforts to make the learning of plant biology more exciting for young people. Something it has just undertaken a three-year study in.

Last Saturday, some 15 young people spent the day at Wakehurst Place using a variety of scientific analysis to try and solve the riddle of the ‘Death in the Green Zone’.

The scenario was that a Miss Susie Sing has been working at the gardens since last summer, but hadn’t got on well with other staff. Last week, while everyone was busy planting thousands of cyclamen bulbs, she disappeared, and hasn’t been seen since.

Five staff, all seen planting, claimed to know nothing and have seen nothing of this. But clothing, believed to have been Ms Sing’s was found in the leaf litter under the yew hedge.

Wakehurst’s rangers sprang into action, collecting clothing from the five suspects, and taking pollen samples from each.

The budding young scientists’ job was to analyse these to see if any had traces of pollen from the crime scene. It is a technique which was used in the Soham murder enquiry where pollen became a vital clue to securing a conviction.

At the end of the morning, the year nine students, from schools across West Sussex, presented their results which showed that one member of the garden staff had not been completely about his movements in interview to Ranger Veronica, a constable in the Kew Constabulary.

The afternoon was spent on another forensic investigation, that of DNA fingerprinting. Various wood samples was tested which also eliminate four of the five suspects from the crime scene.

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