Areas of Expertise
Environmental Education
Environmental education is an urgently needed activity across the globe to raise public awareness of the richness, diversity, and fragility of the natural world. It encompasses all of the areas below, and also includes lesson plans, development of eco-trails, funding issues, and other aspects. The PN team has decades of experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating environmental education programs in a range of settings for diverse audiences. PN arranges online and in person workshops for its partners and their collaborators, and follows up with ongoing support and resources, including rigorous monitoring of results.
Therapeutic Horticulture
Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia have experienced wars and massive forced internal migrations in recent years. TH, or nature-based therapy, has been shown to be effective in helping those suffering from trauma, such as refugee families, military veterans, and individuals with disabilities. Botanical gardens are ideal centers for TH because of their accessibility, skilled staff, diversity of plants and landscapes, and opportunities for practicing healing activities such as horticulture. PN is collaborating with North Carolina Botanical Garden, which offers a TH certification program. Several botanical gardens in Ukraine and Armenia are currently introducing TH programs with PN’s support.
Natural History Interpretation
Natural history interpretation is a foundational aspect of environmental education, bringing deeper understanding of the natural world to audiences through specific techniques of presentation and interaction, including signage. PN provides training programs in natural history interpretation in collaboration with its expert partners in the US and overseas. When appropriate, PN introduces its overseas partners to certification programs and assists in participation.
The Visitor Experience
The Visitor Experience encompasses the entire gamut of sensual and mental impressions conveyed to visitors during a visit to a botanical garden, national park, natural history museum, or other sites, starting with pre-visit information through the visit’s conclusion and follow-up. In workshops and presentations the PN team addresses how these aspects of the Visitor Experience can be structured, integrated, and evaluated, including strategies relating to signage. PN closely follows new innovations and insights in this evolving field, and keeps its partners up to date with relevant information.
Working with Volunteers
Volunteers are an invaluable resource at the heart of most successful nature education programs. Yet often volunteers are inadequately recruited, trained, incentivized, and appreciated. The PN team has worked directly with volunteers in many different settings, including both large and small institutions, and draws on the knowledge of successful volunteer administrators and their programs in the US and overseas. When hosting international groups of educators in the US, PN often arranges direct participation in hands-on volunteer field events.
Ecotourism
Ecotourism can have a profound influence on perceptions, attitudes, and behavior toward the natural world, as well as being a potential “green” source of revenue for outlying communities. PN works with its overseas partners to conceive and plan ecotourism opportunities in conjunction with their larger environmental and educational goals. We draw on lessons learned by ecotourism developers to assist our partners in designing sustainable programs and avoiding pitfalls.
Connecting International Partners
International partnerships, when developed thoughtfully and strategically, bring profound and lasting benefits in a wide range of topics, including those listed above. PN’s international partners emphasize the value of new insights and techniques they have gained through exchange programs and networks formed with educators from other countries, and from their own country. The PN team collectively has several decades of experience running successful international exchange programs related to nature education.