Right Royal Space Plants
As a nation mourns the death of its queen, I thought I would celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s lifelong love of plants and gardening.
Although there probably aren’t that many royal associations for astrobotany, there is at least one. In 2015, the Queen visited the visited the UK Space Agency and RHS ‘Rocket Science’ exhibition at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
This was where the RHS and the UK Space Agency launched their ‘out-of-this-world’ Rocket Science educational project.
Rocket Science sent 2 kg of rocket (arugula) seeds the International Space Station as part of ESA astronaut Tim Peake’s six-month Principia mission.
After several months in space, the seeds returned to Earth and were sent to thousands of UK schools, alongside identical seeds that stayed on Earth. The kids grew both sets of seeds to see whether space travel had affected them.
Prince Charles also visited the stand that day. In the image above, you can see him talking with Jeremy Curtis from the UK Space Agency (right). Jeremy talked a bit about his royal Chelsea experience in a recent episode of Gardeners of the Galaxy:
The UK Space Agency has more photos from that day in their Flickr photo album.
Unless otherwise stated, © Copyright Emma Doughty 2023. Published on theunconventionalgardener.com.
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