Building on Mendel

Twelve months after the first successes of an ambitious project to commemorate Mendel in the abbey where he carried out his work, efforts are now turning to the gardens, perhaps some of the most intellectually fruitful patches of ground in the world. Restoration work in the abbey, in the beautiful Czech city of Brno, reveals a building in which little has changed since Mendel’s time where it is easy to imagine the abbot going about his work. Last May saw the inaugural meeting on genetics after the genome, which was attended by many senior biologists, and a new exhibition in the newly renovated Mendel Museum of Genetics in the abbey. But it is the gardens, where Mendel carried out his crucial plant breeding experiments, that represent the place of his major achievements. The first phase of garden restoration is about to take place. Anna Nasmyth, project manager based at the University of Vienna, says that this will comprise a planting of fuchsias — Mendel’s favourite flowers. The project involves John Parker, director of Cambridge University Botanical Garden, Ladislav Havel of the Mendel University of Forestry and Agriculture in Brno and architect Eva Jiricna, who designed the Mendel exhibition in the abbey. The display is planned to show the original South American species introduced to Europe in the late 18th century and a selection of cultivars from 1860 to 1900, some of which Mendel was likely to have been familiar with. Modern varieties will also be included to show the results of 200 years of hybridisation and selection. The second, more ambitious phase, is to develop the rest of the site. The proposal is to design a new garden to demonstrate Mendelian principles, to be both beautiful and informative. The garden will concentrate on the work of Mendel and his rediscoverers: Correns, de Vries and Tschermak. The project team have also found some old beehives that, while they cannot verify as being Mendel’s, are of that period and of the same style as ones he is known to have ordered from France. “We are planning an exhibition on bees,” says Nasmyth, with the aim ultimately of restoring his apiary. There is an open space adjacent to this which the team believe could be planted with fruit trees with a genetic interest: for example a trichomeless form of the peach, diploid and triploid apples of local Czech varieties and selfand cross-fertile cherries. While the garden is now the focus, projects are unfolding in the abbey. A major series of lectures began this month and will run until December with a distinguished list of biologists. A new exhibition is also planned. The team have established a dual-nationality charity: The Gregor Mendel Trust in the UK and the Gregor Mendel Foundation in the US. Private donors in the US have been generous as have been local companies. Funds have also come from Brno, South Moravia and the Czech ministry of culture. But the lion’s share so far has come from the Austrian Association for the Advancement of Genome Research (VFG). “We are still looking for major sponsors to help the project through,” says Nasmyth. Features