A Living Investment In Nature

Withdrawing seeds from the world's wildest bank

A few hours outside central London, nestled among Kew's wild botanic gardens at Wakehurst, 2.5 billion seeds sleep. They have been collected from 190 countries and represent 40,000 plant species. Scientists have dried, cleaned, and X-rayed these seeds, and banked them into vaults at minus 20 degrees Celsius.

This is the Millennium Seed Bank, the largest of its kind, and, in David Attenborough's words, "perhaps the most significant conservation initiative ever."

It's not just a rainy-day fund, but an investment in nature that’s already providing returns.

With 45% of flowering plants threatened with extinction, nature restoration is more important than ever before. Elinor Breman explains that by banking and preserving seeds, "we're buying time" – increasing plant knowledge through research and keeping seeds safe in a world where nearly 600 species have already disappeared from the wild.

Plants not only make landscapes more interesting, they're also critical to human survival. Our ability to feed the population depends on them. According to the FAO, rice, maize, and wheat make up over half of the world's food intake, while 90% of food consumption relies on just fifteen crops. This system is bad for our health, bad for the soil, bad for the economy – and likely to fail.

With only a fraction of edible plants classified as food, there is huge potential to build a healthier, more resilient food system rooted in biodiversity.

The seeds stored at Millennium Seed Bank are small, but their journey is often extraordinary. Seed collectors travel to remote corners of the globe, sometimes in dangerous conditions, to recover them before it's too late.

In healthy environments, seeds disperse through wind, water, animals, or when seed pods explode. These natural mechanisms enable the seeds to find places to germinate and grow, allowing plants to survive and landscapes to evolve. But in heavily degraded ecosystems, there are simply not enough seeds to carry out this function. As Kate Hardwick puts it, "sometimes nature needs a helping hand."

The vaults at the Millennium Seed Bank keep seeds safe for the future, but they are not the seeds' forever home – their ultimate destination is back in the wild. When habitats become degraded through disease, disaster or over-exploitation, seeds are withdrawn from the bank to rebuild the landscape. The seeds are just the start. As habitats regenerate from the ground up, wildlife moves back in, and ecosystems thrive once again.

This project is an investment in our future, because when nature succeeds, so do we. As the cornerstone of a healthy planet, biodiversity is always a safe bet.

With thanks to our contributors:

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Charlotte Lusty, Head of Seed Collections at the Millennium Seed Bank

Dr Elinor Breman, Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation

Dr Louise Colville, Senior Research Leader in Seed Stress and Biology

Dr Kate Hardwick, Millennium Seed Bank Partnership Restoration Coordinator