School visits | Nederlands | Français

With a green area of 92 hectares and 18 000 plant species from all over the world, the Botanic Garden of Meise offers splendid opportunities for school classes to discover the world of Botany.

Our education service has worked out activities in English for both Primary and Secondary school classes.

For Primary Schools

• Class meets gardener:
  In this activity the children learn from a professional Botanic Garden gardener how to take care of carnivorous and exotic plants. They are introduced to the cultivation greenhouses, where other visitors never come and where they experience different ways of reproducing plants. All children go home with a plant they have planted themselves.
  
  
• Desert:
  In this workshop, the children explore the desert biome. How do plants adapt to the special conditions in the desert? What animals live in close relationship with these plants? What differences are there between deserts in Africa, Australia and America? The children acquire these knowledge in an interactive and creative way.
  
  
• Nothing is bigger the a tree:
  In this workshop, the children learn a lot about our indigenous trees. How can we recognize them by looking at the leaves, the fruits, the stem …? What does a newborn tree look like, and how big is a tree of my age? Engaging in a game, they discover how a tree interacts with its environment. Finally, they can experience an adventurous discovery of exotic trees, like explorers who travel to distant countries.
  

For Secondary Schools

• Biomes:
  This activity introduces the students to three different biomes: the desert, the Mediterranean biome and the tropical rainforest. Each biome is approached in a slightly different way. In the desert, we emphasize on plant adaptations and in the rainforest, we discover how inhabitants of the rainforest interact with plants. In the Mediterranean biome, we use all our senses – and discover how plant scents and protection are related to each other.
  
• Plants in our daily life:
  Do you know that we use (exotic) plants every day? Not only in food and drinks, but also for clothing, in medicines etc.
  

The Botanic Garden offers the unique possibility to see all these economical exotic plants. Since sustainability and biodiversity are main topics in the vision of our garden, students are stimulated to think and discuss about environmental issues related to the use of these plants.

For more information, please contact our Education Department : Jutta Kleber: jutta.kleber(AT)br.fgov.be