Kew Gardens donated seeds and plants to establish the collection, this collection was used by students to enable them to study Botany.

The Garden has made many contributions towards species conservation most notably in 2011 when the Garden donated seeds of a newly discovered and already threatened monotypic species, Prototulbaghia siebertii, to the Millennium Seed Bank Project.

He was soon donating or swapping seeds, seedlings, or cuttings, of the unusual plants he had found throughout the country.

- "Seeds for Life", a campaign to donate seeds to Third World countries, inspired by the campaign initiated by Association Kokopelli in France, "Semences sans Frontières," or "Seeds without Borders".

Annual dues at the North American Rock Garden Society, www.nargs.org, are $25; for an additional $12.50, the society gives its members 25 seed packets --30 for those who donate seeds.

Two years later, the 6th Duke opened an Andes-themed garden in Chester Zoo in honour of his aunt Sally, who was a zoo council member and who had donated seeds obtained during her 1968 visit to the Andes.

Annual dues are $25; for an additional $12.50, the society gives its members 25 seed packets --30 for those who donate seeds.