21/07/2025

Planting for a Warmer World: Lessons from Kew’s Carbon Garden 

Last week, the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew, opened its new Carbon Garden - an ambitious living laboratory showcasing how plants, soil, and fungi can work together to combat climate change and biodiversity loss. Home to over 6,500 drought-tolerant and climate-adapted plants from around the world, the garden serves both as a warning and a beacon: the choices we make today will shape the resilience of our landscapes for decades to come. 

In a world of rising temperatures, more intense rainfall, and frequent droughts, this shift in horticultural thinking isn’t optional- it’s urgent. 

Climate Pressure is Impacting Our Plants and Landscapes 

Take the UK as an example. By 2080, under current emissions scenarios, much of southern England could experience summer temperatures regularly exceeding 35°C​ (Coley, Liu and Fosas 2023)​ . Winter flooding events will become more severe and prolonged, while periods of summer drought will stretch longer. 

Every time you restore or create a landscape, anywhere in the world, you are making a commitment to the future. These new landscapes are the engines for nature gain and the plants and fungi they contain underpin them.  Climate change and biodiversity loss are eroding our ability to match that commitment, as plants that once flourished are now struggling to survive. Landscapes designed without reference to future conditions are therefore locking in vulnerability - green today, brown tomorrow.  

The Carbon Garden presents an alternative future, illustrating what is possible when planting is designed around function and resilience, not just tradition. 

Fungi: The Hidden Heroes Beneath Our Feet 

If plants are the face of resilient landscapes, fungi are their foundations. Mycorrhizal fungi form a symbiotic network with plant roots, enhancing water and nutrient uptake, boosting disease resistance, and crucially, anchoring carbon into stable soil pools. 

These networks receive between 5–20 % of plant-fixed carbon - and can account for 50–70 % of total soil carbon in forest ecosystems Globally, mycorrhizal fungi sequester up to 13 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually ​ (Hawkins, et al. 2023)​, equivalent to about a third of human fossil fuel emissions. Moreover, these fungal networks are crucial elements of healthy soil structure and can have a dramatic impact on its porosity (or not) with profound impacts in a future with less frequent, more intense rainfall. 

This subterranean world is still being uncovered, and RBG Kew’s own fungarium supports this research, enabling deeper insights into fungal diversity and  their role in the carbon cycle. 

Ignoring fungi in planting schemes is like building without foundations and without this underground support system, plant life falters and carbon sinks remain shallow and unstable. 

What Needs to Change? 

If we’re serious about building landscapes that can thrive in the future, we need to make changes today: 

• Selecting and planting better-adapted species, including resilient natives (and carefully chosen non-natives), and sourcing from sub-populations equipped to deal with future conditions (e.g. drought-tolerant oaks from southern Europe). 

• Designing with soil and fungi in mind - integrating inoculation strategies and prioritising mycorrhizal health in restoration and urban planting. 

• Using rain gardens and other Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) to slow, filter, and store water in the landscape- turning runoff into resilience. 

• Designing landscapes that are engines for nature gain, that actively promote wildlife, above and below ground.   

How Kew Reach Can Help? 

Kew Reach works in the UK and globally with developers, landowners, planners, and conservationists to deliver science-led solutions for a warming world. 

We support partners with: 

• Climate-adapted species selection and landscape design  

• Seed sourcing from resilient populations, backed by the Millennium Seed Bank 

• Fungal integration and soil restoration 

• Monitoring and long-term technical support 

• Public engagement and citizen science 

Our work is grounded in the science of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - with 260 years of botanical research, over 500 scientists, and deep field experience guiding everything we do. 

Whether you’re designing a public park, restoring a wetland, or delivering a large-scale regeneration project, we can help you do it right. 

Now is the Time to Act

The Carbon Garden is more than a showcase - it’s a call to action. Climate change is already reshaping the way we live so our landscapes need to adapt too. 

The good news? We have the tools, knowledge, and partnerships to build thriving ecosystems - green spaces that are functional, beautiful, biodiverse, and resilient. 

So, if you’re thinking about how to make your landscapes work harder for the climate, nature, and the people who use them - we’d love to talk. 

Get in touch at charlie.roper@kewreach.com