What were the best bits of the Beth Chatto Symposium 2026? Here are our highlights and the latest news from the event

Published: August 28, 2026 at 11:45 pm

The Beth Chatto Symposium is a favourite of the ‘horterati’ - a three-day event that takes place at the University of Colchester every two years, with speakers from around the world giving presentations or doing on-stage discussions.

This year’s theme was Connections through time, and the first presentation with Jennifer McElwain ran through 400 million years of tree evolution and her work measuring the carbon in the atmosphere in deep time, and raised such intriguing questions as exactly how you figure out what shade of green the trees were all that time ago.

Dry garden guru Olivier Filippi brought a charismatic presence to proceedings for his presentation on new plant, insect and bird interactions in a changing climate.…