Cate Blanchett: Welcome to a new chapter of Unearthed from the Royal
Cate Blanchett: Botanic Gardens, Kew. Now, this series is a little bit
Cate Blanchett: different for an exciting reason because this year marks the
Cate Blanchett: 25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank. Now, the Millennium
Cate Blanchett: Seed Bank is the largest store of wild seeds on
Cate Blanchett: earth, and it's also the most biodiverse place on the
Cate Blanchett: planet. The roots of this extraordinary initiative lie tucked away
Cate Blanchett: deep in the Sussex countryside at Wakehurst, Kew's wild botanic
Cate Blanchett: garden, but its impact stretches far beyond those quiet hills.
Cate Blanchett: You might be thinking, " Well, that's fascinating, but why does
Cate Blanchett: it matter to me?" Because the future of life on
Cate Blanchett: Earth may very well depend on the seeds stored within
Cate Blanchett: this bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and I'm so passionate about
Cate Blanchett: the Millennium Seed Bank's mission that I've become Kew's Ambassador for Wakehurst. And
Cate Blanchett: the work done here is vital. But don't just take
Cate Blanchett: my word for it. In this special episode marking a
Cate Blanchett: momentous milestone, you'll hear from another voice, one that has
Cate Blanchett: long championed the natural world. On a sunny summer afternoon
Cate Blanchett: Kew's Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation, Dr. Elinor Breman
Cate Blanchett: and I were invited to the private gardens of Windsor
Cate Blanchett: Castle where we had the honor of speaking about the Millennium
Cate Blanchett: Seed Bank with Kew's patron, His Majesty, The King. Now
Cate Blanchett: you may hear the occasional rumble overhead. Windsor lies directly
Cate Blanchett: beneath a busy fight path. It's a gentle reminder perhaps
Cate Blanchett: that nature is so often interrupted by human activity. King
Cate Blanchett: Charles has a deep connection to the natural world, and
Cate Blanchett: this is evident through decades of conservation and philanthropic work.
Cate Blanchett: But you may not know that he opened the Millennium
Cate Blanchett: Seed Bank back in the year 2000, and has taken an active
Cate Blanchett: interest in its progress ever since.
Dr. Elinor Breman: I wanted to take you back to the start of
Dr. Elinor Breman: the Millennium Seed Bank.
King Charles: Were you there when I came?
Dr. Elinor Breman: I was not, unfortunately. I wish I had been. And I
Dr. Elinor Breman: wasn't even there when you came back in 2019.
King Charles: Really?
Dr. Elinor Breman: But it's been wonderful to have your involvement and support
Dr. Elinor Breman: for all of that time, so thank you so much.
King Charles: No, because I knew how important it was.
Cate Blanchett: It was such an innovative, state of the art and
Cate Blanchett: bold initiative, so future- facing, but now it's just so
Cate Blanchett: vital. And you've been such a pioneer in this space.
King Charles: I do forget that, was it 40 something years ago? 45 years ago? I remember I
King Charles: became a patron of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, which has
King Charles: now become Garden Organic. But in those days, it was
King Charles: actually rescuing all the heritage vegetables and fruits and plants
King Charles: and everything. Because at the time, all the old varieties were
King Charles: being thrown away, wasn't considered as well.
Dr. Elinor Breman: They were being lost. Right. Yeah.
King Charles: And the same with, that's why I became patron of the
King Charles: Rare Breed Survival Trust, to help with the native breeds
King Charles: matter. Everything was being shrunk down to the absolute minimum
King Charles: for maximum production purposes. Anything that was not maximum production
King Charles: was not considered vital.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Was gone.
King Charles: But I just felt it was critical to keep the balance always.
Dr. Elinor Breman: They're very foresighted.
King Charles: Because you may need them at a later stage. Don't throw them away.
Dr. Elinor Breman: No.
King Charles: So it was quite difficult. I know how absolute critical it
King Charles: all is in the destruction of rainforests, the extinction of
King Charles: endless species which have very likely remarkable properties, medical and everything else, without any concern.
Cate Blanchett: Yes. It's sort of we understand the built world and the history, but we don't think about the
Cate Blanchett: history contained within a seed.
King Charles: No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett: And the importance of... I only actually became aware of
Cate Blanchett: the concept of an allium seed through the work that
Cate Blanchett: you've done, so it's been so influential and much appreciated.
King Charles: Thank you.
Cate Blanchett: But it's all contained and the Seed Bank 25 years on.
Dr. Elinor Breman: I know. So it was interesting because it relates to
Dr. Elinor Breman: that... The origins of seed banking of wild plants came
Dr. Elinor Breman: from agriculture and seed saving. And then, one of the
Dr. Elinor Breman: things at the heart of the Millennium Seed Bank, apart
Dr. Elinor Breman: from plant conservation on a global scale, was really that
Dr. Elinor Breman: engagement with the public and making them understand the need
Dr. Elinor Breman: for the conservation. So this is a mini seed bank
Dr. Elinor Breman: in a Tupperware box.
Cate Blanchett: State of the art.
Dr. Elinor Breman: State of the art, doesn't get any better than this. But you can
Dr. Elinor Breman: bank seeds to international kind of standards just with this
Dr. Elinor Breman: box. And it was something that we developed just after
Dr. Elinor Breman: the Seed Bank opened so that anyone visiting could take
Dr. Elinor Breman: a piece of this science and the conservation home with
Dr. Elinor Breman: them and feel like it was something they could do.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Getting people engaged in conservation has been such a vital
Dr. Elinor Breman: piece of the work.
King Charles: I'm so glad. Because now what is it? It's 85%
King Charles: or something of the indigenous plants here are collected.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, so we've managed to bank already 85% of the
Dr. Elinor Breman: UK's threshened flora. So there's some seeds that you can't
Dr. Elinor Breman: bank. They just don't like being dried and frozen.
Cate Blanchett: Recalciant.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Recalciant. It's a great name for them, isn't it? But
Dr. Elinor Breman: of those that we can bank, we're about 98% there.
Dr. Elinor Breman: So now we're trying to capture more genetic diversity within
Dr. Elinor Breman: those, just make sure that we've got them collected from
Dr. Elinor Breman: all the populations across the UK. We've done some great
Dr. Elinor Breman: work on UK trees. And in fact, some elms as
Dr. Elinor Breman: part of a conservation program that we've been doing with
Dr. Elinor Breman: Natural England are actually out here in the Windsor Great
Dr. Elinor Breman: Park. Yeah. So we've sent some material back from the brink.
King Charles: Well done. Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Well, thank you for providing a home for them.
King Charles: No, no, no. Well, I keep trying to provide homes for
King Charles: lots of these sort of things I get given. I went to the National Pinetum the other day in Bedgebury.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, wonderful place.
King Charles: Which did start with Kew.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes.
King Charles: Was it in 1925 or was it '29?
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, it was back in the '20s, I'm not sure
Dr. Elinor Breman: which year.
King Charles: But they've got this incredible collection there.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah. No, absolutely. Priceless.
King Charles: They've given me something there to try and see if you can...
Dr. Elinor Breman: Oh, fantastic. And see if it can grow here as well.
Cate Blanchett: I understand there's been a lot of regeneration of this
Cate Blanchett: part of the private garden as well.
King Charles: Yes.
Cate Blanchett: That's a real labor of love. This didn't look like this three or four years ago.
King Charles: Yeah. Because I've been making more beds. I marked them all
King Charles: out where I wanted them.
Cate Blanchett: It's a beautiful design.
King Charles: And more trees and things, but trying to keep them going is the problem with this
King Charles: dry weather.
Cate Blanchett: Well, to think that you have to drought-proof of garden here in this bucolic isle is...
King Charles: Absolutely, because the key nowadays I think is I've been trying to do
King Charles: for years is take the rainwater off the roofs and
King Charles: somehow get it onto the garden.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes.
King Charles: And the grey water is the other thing I've been
King Charles: trying to show what you can do with.
Cate Blanchett: But what you can do with black water too, it
Cate Blanchett: can be purified to drinking.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah.
Cate Blanchett: But as an Australian, I'm water obsessed. And in fact,
Cate Blanchett: I was really humble, but also inspired by the work
Cate Blanchett: that the Seed Bank had done with partner organizations in
Cate Blanchett: Australia. And after the 2019 bushfires at Cudlee Creek, almost
Cate Blanchett: 30,000 hectares were destroyed and there were many species that
Cate Blanchett: were in danger of being completely wiped out. But of
Cate Blanchett: course, with the South Australian Seed Conservation Center, they had
Cate Blanchett: banked over a thousand seeds of a key variety.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes. It's clover glycine. It was a rare species vulnerable
Dr. Elinor Breman: in Australia, and our partners in Australia had banked it
Dr. Elinor Breman: in 2007, but it had only ever been a small
Dr. Elinor Breman: collection because there were only a few plants left in the wild.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And unfortunately they were lost during those bushfires, but we
Dr. Elinor Breman: were able to send them back the seeds and they
Dr. Elinor Breman: could propagate new plants and collect more seeds. And it's
Dr. Elinor Breman: been a really successful reintroduction story. And I think it
Dr. Elinor Breman: just shows the value of seed banking. It's not a
Dr. Elinor Breman: static place. It's not that we want the seeds to
Dr. Elinor Breman: end up in the bank. They're there for safekeeping. But
Dr. Elinor Breman: the whole idea is they're going to be plants in
Dr. Elinor Breman: a landscape, not seeds in a glass jar in a
Dr. Elinor Breman: minus 20 freezer. That's where they need to be for
Dr. Elinor Breman: now, but it's not their end story.
King Charles: Because I was riveted in Australia last year, I managed
King Charles: to go and visit them briefly, the Botanic Gardens in Canberra.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes.
King Charles: But their particular place where they do the smoke testing.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah. So we've got some here.
King Charles: They told me about all this there.
Cate Blanchett: Senecios.
King Charles: Senecios, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman: So these are fire- adapted species, so you have to adapt to
Dr. Elinor Breman: your environment. And these guys will only open once a
Dr. Elinor Breman: fire has been through. So this one, the seed pods
Dr. Elinor Breman: are still closed. We had to blowtorch this-
King Charles: Did you? Right. Senecios.
Dr. Elinor Breman: ... In the lab to get it open because they'll only respond to fire.
King Charles: Yep.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And then these are another species of Leucadendron from South Africa,
Dr. Elinor Breman: also only responds to fires.
Cate Blanchett: So these are the Banksia seeds. There's nothing ugly in nature.
Cate Blanchett: This one is open. It looks like a series of
Cate Blanchett: little mouths, hard little mouths where the seeds have popped
Cate Blanchett: out. And this one is a, well, it's a bit like a toilet brush.
Dr. Elinor Breman: It is a little bit like a toilet brush or
Dr. Elinor Breman: a microphone, yes. It does look a little bit like
Dr. Elinor Breman: a cone. It's not botanically a cone, but it kind
Dr. Elinor Breman: of has that feeling of being a cone. I don't
Dr. Elinor Breman: know if you want to smell this, but it smells
Dr. Elinor Breman: of smoke.
King Charles: No, this exactly is.
Dr. Elinor Breman: We put it in as a smoke solution to get
Dr. Elinor Breman: the seeds to think that they've been through a fire
Dr. Elinor Breman: episode. And only then will they start to germinate. So
Dr. Elinor Breman: we have to tease out and mimic the environment of
Dr. Elinor Breman: all these 40,000 different species that we hold in the
Dr. Elinor Breman: bank, because it's so important to know how to turn
Dr. Elinor Breman: the seed back into a plant. That's the vital step
Dr. Elinor Breman: in the restoration of all of our global habitats that
Dr. Elinor Breman: we're all depending on.
King Charles: Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: So yeah, I think for me that part of the
Dr. Elinor Breman: work of the seed bank is vital and the expertise
Dr. Elinor Breman: that people have built up there.
King Charles: But I wonder how long it took these ones to adapt to the idea of fire
King Charles: was the critical?
Dr. Elinor Breman: Well, fire has been-
Cate Blanchett: 40, 000 years.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, exactly. Part of the landscape for a long time.
Cate Blanchett: These, even though they are fire resilient and have adapted,
Cate Blanchett: the last few bushfires, the intensity of the heat has
Cate Blanchett: been such that it's making it even difficult for these
Cate Blanchett: seeds to survive. And even though they're part of the
Cate Blanchett: regeneration process after a bushfire, it's just so hot that
Cate Blanchett: it's a challenge even for these ones to survive.
King Charles: Which is why I think the great thing is, and
King Charles: another thing I tried to do 35 years ago, was to try and see if I
King Charles: could collate another kind of seed bank of all the indigenous
King Charles: traditional knowledge and wisdom around the world. But in those days, it wouldn't help in any way.
Cate Blanchett: No.
King Charles: So now the great thing is there are more and
King Charles: more efforts. One of my organizations I started, the Circular
King Charles: Bioeconomy Alliance, been trying to help set up these fire
King Charles: resilience initiatives, particularly in Calder that I discovered in Australia
King Charles: because they learned so much from the Aboriginal knowledge and
King Charles: understanding to make sure you'd burn it off.
Cate Blanchett: The mosaic burning.
King Charles: The fuel load.
Cate Blanchett: I had gone to Uluru 25 years ago and two
Cate Blanchett: years ago where took my four children back because they'd
Cate Blanchett: never been to Central Australia. And the difference in the
Cate Blanchett: landscape, because it had been handed over to Indigenous land
Cate Blanchett: managers, was profound. It was La Nina, so it was
Cate Blanchett: very green, but the diversity of grasses and the wildlife
Cate Blanchett: that had had been brought back to the base of
Cate Blanchett: the rock was just, it made me weep. It was
Cate Blanchett: extraordinary, really extraordinary.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And nature is resilient. And if we give her the
Dr. Elinor Breman: chance, she will come back.
King Charles: That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: So I see the Seed Bank as buying time to
Dr. Elinor Breman: give nature that chance and to be able to have
Dr. Elinor Breman: those habitats where we can put things back. So the
Dr. Elinor Breman: plants that I brought along today, there's a cylindrophyllum hallii.
Cate Blanchett: Fingers, this one looks like a lot of little green squishy fingers.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, it's kind of a succulent starbursts really coming out
Dr. Elinor Breman: in different places. And a pachydermic, this is from Madagascar, and
Dr. Elinor Breman: actually they're quite ornamental plants. They're really beautiful. And unfortunately
Dr. Elinor Breman: they're being collected from the world and so becoming endangered. But
Dr. Elinor Breman: our partners, both SANBI in South Africa and SNGF in
Dr. Elinor Breman: Madagascar are doing a really great job of, they're creating
Dr. Elinor Breman: a little arboretum with some that have been seized in
Dr. Elinor Breman: Madagascar. And in South Africa, they're doing a really great
Dr. Elinor Breman: job of trying to stop the illegal poaching and trade
Dr. Elinor Breman: in succulent plants as well. So I just feel anything
Dr. Elinor Breman: we can do to give nature a hand.
King Charles: Absolutely. So do these get bigger?
Dr. Elinor Breman: They're going to get much bigger, yes. That one's going
Dr. Elinor Breman: to not go too much bigger because of the pot
Dr. Elinor Breman: size it's in at the minute.
King Charles: Yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Because the glass house is only so large.
King Charles: But it could get more.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah, they can get a lot bigger. Yes.
King Charles: And is it growing literally in virtually nothing, is it?
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah. It's a very nutrient poor medium, yeah. And we
Dr. Elinor Breman: have two collections in the bank of this species and
Dr. Elinor Breman: a lot more of the cylindrophyllum. That was down to only
Dr. Elinor Breman: six individuals in the wild.
King Charles: But this one?
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes.
King Charles: These ones, do you treat them the same way? Are they better being dried or frozen or what?
Dr. Elinor Breman: So the seeds are being treated in the same way. So
Dr. Elinor Breman: in our Seed Bank, 85% of plants produce seeds that
Dr. Elinor Breman: we call orthodox. So they can withstand drying to 15%
Dr. Elinor Breman: relative humidity, a bit like a long haul flight, I
Dr. Elinor Breman: always say. And then...
Cate Blanchett: That was a bad thinking about.
King Charles: I don't know. I wouldn't know.
Dr. Elinor Breman: You'd be preserving on the flight. Let's look at it
Dr. Elinor Breman: that way. And then, in an airtight container at minus
Dr. Elinor Breman: 20. So then that extends their natural lifespan for tens
Dr. Elinor Breman: to hundreds of years, which is amazing. So it provides
Dr. Elinor Breman: an opportunity not just for today, but for future generations.
King Charles: And are you increasing the number of collaborators around the world who are able to help with the collections?
Dr. Elinor Breman: So I think that's been the real strength of the
Dr. Elinor Breman: Millennium Seed Bank is its global partnership. And over the
Dr. Elinor Breman: last 20 years, we've worked with a hundred different countries
Dr. Elinor Breman: and territories to help them conserve their native flora. And
Dr. Elinor Breman: I think that's almost 300 partners, different institutes. And we
Dr. Elinor Breman: have a large training and capacity building program because ideally
Dr. Elinor Breman: I'd almost love to put us out of business. I
Dr. Elinor Breman: would like all of our partners to have the means
Dr. Elinor Breman: and the wherewithal to be doing this on their own
Dr. Elinor Breman: and conserving their own native flora without any need for
Dr. Elinor Breman: our support. And then with our partners, all the seeds
Dr. Elinor Breman: are stored in the country of origin and a part
Dr. Elinor Breman: of it is sent to us to safety duplication. Yeah.
Dr. Elinor Breman: You always need that extra insurance policy.
Cate Blanchett: But there is an urgency to the work that the Seed Bank
Cate Blanchett: does here in this country. I was shocked to learn
Cate Blanchett: that 97% of the wildflower meadows have been decimated. I
Cate Blanchett: don't think it's something that we quite understand here.
Dr. Elinor Breman: No.
Cate Blanchett: Because we look around us and in the immediate term
Cate Blanchett: we see so much natural beauty, but we don't think
Cate Blanchett: about how fragile it is.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah. And the fact that unfortunately, the UK is already biodiversity-
Dr. Elinor Breman: depauperate from the starting point as well. So we've got
Dr. Elinor Breman: a lot of diversity to put back into our own
Dr. Elinor Breman: landscapes, and we're doing a lot of restoration work across
Dr. Elinor Breman: the chalk grassland and also working with partners all across
Dr. Elinor Breman: the Four Nations. I think we've done about a hundred
Dr. Elinor Breman: different restoration projects over the years, which is fantastic; seeing
Dr. Elinor Breman: the seeds leaving the bank and going to their rightful homes.
King Charles: Well, I did manage to get an initiative going called
King Charles: the Coronation Meadows to celebrate my late mama's anniversary of her coronation. But I thought it was a good excuse-
Cate Blanchett: To highlight that.
King Charles: Because I knew about that real damage has been done to all our flower-
King Charles: rich meadows since the war, really.
Cate Blanchett: Really in that short a space of time.
King Charles: Absolutely incredible, because what you can destroy in one day
King Charles: by just plowing it up takes practically a hundred years
King Charles: to replace. And it requires constant management, the same management
King Charles: to create this remarkable diversity. And I've seen it in
King Charles: Transylvania, it's even more unbelievable.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Oh, a spectacular.
King Charles: I'm trying to rescue some of those meadows before they
King Charles: get destroyed because they're unique.
Cate Blanchett: And what's the difference between them, forgive my ignorance, the
Cate Blanchett: meadows there and here?
King Charles: Well. there's a lot of similarity to what we would've
King Charles: had in the medieval times.
Cate Blanchett: I see.
King Charles: I think. There was a terrific arrangement amongst the local
King Charles: communities as to how they managed it all and shared
King Charles: the effort. And so on the same, the management of the forests.
Cate Blanchett: Right. So they didn't have big large- scale industrial farming.
King Charles: No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett: So that meant that they could preserve them. Right.
King Charles: And it somehow went on and on and on, same way.
King Charles: And that's what's enabled many of these meadows to have
King Charles: something like 17 or 18 or something different species of orchid.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah. And it's stunning, the diversity there. We worked with partners
Dr. Elinor Breman: in Romania to help conserve the diversity and across the
Dr. Elinor Breman: whole mountain chain as well, because there's so much unique
Dr. Elinor Breman: diversity there. It's absolutely stunning.
King Charles: No, I think it's wonderful what the Seed Bank is doing, but we've got to speed up the process.
Dr. Elinor Breman: We need to ramp it up.
Cate Blanchett: Yeah.
Dr. Elinor Breman: The idea moving forward is to take advantage of a
Dr. Elinor Breman: lot of the technologies that have come in over the
Dr. Elinor Breman: last 25 years. We really need to upscale and improve,
Dr. Elinor Breman: make use of high- throughput screening for genetics, for traits,
Dr. Elinor Breman: for image- taking. There's so much information held within each seed-
King Charles: Yes, isn't there.
Dr. Elinor Breman: ... that we need to access much, much more quickly.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And also, we need to scale up our conservation efforts
Dr. Elinor Breman: unfortunately, because 45% of plant species are now threatened with
Dr. Elinor Breman: extinction, so almost half of the plants around us, which
Dr. Elinor Breman: unimaginable. And I do think there's an education piece in
Dr. Elinor Breman: that people take plants for granted still despite your years
Dr. Elinor Breman: of work and others'; they don't understand their relevance to
Dr. Elinor Breman: the life, to the fact that literally the air we
Dr. Elinor Breman: breathe would not be here without the plants.
Cate Blanchett: And also I suppose to enable your partners to build
Cate Blanchett: not necessarily facilities that will survive an airplane crash or
Cate Blanchett: a nuclear disaster as the Seed Bank will, but to have
Cate Blanchett: the capacity.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Exactly. Anybody can do seed banking. And we have a
Dr. Elinor Breman: lot of partners who don't have regular electricity supply, but
Dr. Elinor Breman: they can still bank seeds to international standards and conserve
Dr. Elinor Breman: their flora and all of that hope and possibility for
Dr. Elinor Breman: their future.
Cate Blanchett: Yeah.
King Charles: But you would think that we try to encourage the
King Charles: pharmaceutical sector to see that actually it's surely in their
King Charles: interest to invest in the protection and enhancement and restoration
King Charles: of this biodiversity from which so many actually of the
King Charles: treatments we are looking for have already come from.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Exactly.
King Charles: So it's surely in their interest to do that. But one
King Charles: of the greatest things I've discovered is there's only at the
King Charles: moment the carbon credits market, which is not as good
King Charles: as it could be. There's no biodiversity credits set up.
King Charles: So this is being tried to be established now, because
King Charles: that would revolutionize the opportunities for investment in the restoration of biodiversity.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Definitely. Kew is involved in a lot of those conversations
Dr. Elinor Breman: as well around biodiversity credits and how we can ensure
Dr. Elinor Breman: that all of these large schemes under the current global
Dr. Elinor Breman: biodiversity framework to restore and maintain natural habitats don't do
Dr. Elinor Breman: any harm and actually enhance biodiversity rather than harming it
Dr. Elinor Breman: in tree planting schemes or others. So we need to
Dr. Elinor Breman: monitor that.
King Charles: So the only way to do that is to make
King Charles: sure we have ecosystem services payments.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Exactly.
King Charles: So you make the-
Dr. Elinor Breman: It needs to be valuable.
King Charles: You make the trees more valuable alive than dead.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Dead. Yes.
King Charles: As timber.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yes.
King Charles: If they're particular species of it. That's why, again, I feel that agroforestry is such an
King Charles: important and underutilized forgotten technique, which could make a dramatic
King Charles: difference in restoring degraded land rapidly.
Dr. Elinor Breman: We've seen that with some partners of ours in Mexico,
Dr. Elinor Breman: and the Veracruz state with the coffee plantations. It was
Dr. Elinor Breman: all kind of open and it used to be cloud
Dr. Elinor Breman: forest. And cloud forest, I think it's only less than
Dr. Elinor Breman: 1% of Mexico.
King Charles: What's cloud forest?
Dr. Elinor Breman: It's forest which is at kind of high elevation usually.
King Charles: Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And then, it draws in its moisture from the cloud
Dr. Elinor Breman: rather than from rain. It's quite a remarkable system. But
Dr. Elinor Breman: we found some native species with working with local communities
Dr. Elinor Breman: that they want to propagate.
King Charles: That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And they're using those as a shade over the coffee now.
King Charles: That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: And set up community nurseries. They get an income from
Dr. Elinor Breman: the nursery. They're growing the species that they are going
Dr. Elinor Breman: to have a use from, and it's producing better coffee.
King Charles: Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman: So you need to find those win- win- wins, don't you? And then it all happens.
King Charles: But agro organisations are doing exactly that in Ethiopia. And they can now demonstrate that within five years
King Charles: you can transform a degraded landscape into something that looks like a forest.
King Charles: And instantly the biodiversity increases: the insects, the birds, the bees. Everything starts to come back.
Cate Blanchett: Yeah. The only frustration for me about inaction on climate
Cate Blanchett: change is that there's so many extraordinary initiatives right there ready to
Cate Blanchett: be scaled up. There's a willingness there, but there's just,
Cate Blanchett: there's not the direction of the funds.
King Charles: And there's that lack of awareness too, as you were saying about the actual detail of all these things.
Dr. Elinor Breman: I know.
King Charles: Let alone the role of pollinating insects.
Dr. Elinor Breman: I know we're always told to not have too complex
Dr. Elinor Breman: a message, but nature is complex. Ecosystems are very complex,
Dr. Elinor Breman: and every part needs to be there for it to
Dr. Elinor Breman: work. Yeah.
King Charles: Because everything's interconnected. Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Cate Blanchett: Thank you so much for making the time.
King Charles: Not at all.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Yeah.
Cate Blanchett: With us.
King Charles: Well, I hope it helps.
Dr. Elinor Breman: It does.
King Charles: It's so wonderful that you're doing so much to help.
Dr. Elinor Breman: It helps enormously.
Cate Blanchett: But your example and your activity in this space have
Cate Blanchett: been, they're legendary.
Dr. Elinor Breman: World- leading.
Cate Blanchett: So thank you.
King Charles: You're kind to say so. I'm not sure how much it's achieved anyway.
Dr. Elinor Breman: An awful lot.
King Charles: We hope. Well, I'm very proud to be patron of Kew. That's a great thing.
Dr. Elinor Breman: Well, thank you so much.
King Charles: It does wonderful work.
Cate Blanchett: That was His Majesty The King, a proud patron of
Cate Blanchett: Kew and a remarkable voice with which to start this
Cate Blanchett: story of the Millennium Seed Bank. And this is just
Cate Blanchett: the beginning. From the grasslands of Southern England to the
Cate Blanchett: humid landscapes of Thailand, the forests of Southern Australia and
Cate Blanchett: even into outer space, in this series we will travel
Cate Blanchett: far and wide. From visionary scientists to intrepid seed collectors,
Cate Blanchett: we'll meet the extraordinary people safeguarding our planet as we
Cate Blanchett: explore the past, the present, and the vital future of
Cate Blanchett: the Millennium Seed Bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and this is
Cate Blanchett: Unearthed: The need for seeds. Follow us wherever you get
Cate Blanchett: your podcasts so you won't miss a moment. Until next
Cate Blanchett: time, thanks for listening.