Education Programs

Primary School

It is wonderful to learn outdoors where you can smell, see, taste and touch plants and hear the stories about them. Children come for the day, from San Ignacio and beyond, for curriculum related field trips.

Preschool to Standard 6 classes can choose from Plant Appreciation, What Plants Can Do!, World Wild Webbing and People Plants.

Secondary School

Teens make the toughest customers but we are confident we can design a tour for your First to Fourth Form class that will leave your students can choose from advanced level field trip topics or teachers can talk to us about a custom trip designed for their classroom topic.

Higher Learning and Foreign Students

We offer an ideal learning spot for students of a variety of sciences and skills. Vocational students pursuing a career in agriculture can come for a lesson on airlayering and tropical fruit tree variety. Ecology students can dissect a trumpet tree to see how ants live in harmony with our local flora. Botany students can make herbarium pressings.

Local institutions of higher learning can utilize the garden for research and participate in existing programs. BBG also offers low cost field study opportunities for local or foreign students of natural sciences to make use of the collection and facilities. We can offer packages with accommodation, labs and classrooms.

For more information on staying with us for your Field Study program contact us for a quote on custom study trips.

Volunteer Certificates

Job Skills Training Certificate

Some vocational schools are no longer accepting students who did not attend college (high school). Vocationall schools are the last chance to learn a marketable skill for children whose parents were unable to send them to college (high school) because they cannot afford it. Because of this children who have been taken out of school after graduating from Standard 6 may have no where to go to learn a trade.

Belize Botanic Gardens offers a 30-day basic job skills training certificate to children that have been taken out of school because of being unable to attend high school for financial reasons. Youths that attend will work with each department at BBG to:

Successful youths will receive:

THIS IS NOT AN ALTERNATIVE TO HIGH SCHOOL and youths that apply must first try to find a high school scholarship through one of the many organizations that offer them. ONLY IF they cannot find a way to attend high school can they attend this program. Contact us if you would like to either support a child to be able to attend high school or know a child who can benefit from this program.

Conservation Certificate

This is a summer opportunity for students in high school or who have graduated for high school and are looking for job experience. Interested students should contact their teacher about receiving extra credit for completing the course during the school year.

The course is a total of 20 days completed 2 days a week during the summer months.

Attendees will:

The fee for this certificate program is $185.00 and includes:

The Best Library

Come and educate yourself at The Best Library at BBG. While we don't allow books to leave the property, there are lots of beautiful spots to curl up at BBG with a book from The Best Library. If you live in Belize and want to know about growing palms, raising passionflowers, the orchids of Belize, organic horticulture, tropical fruit, permaculture, gardening in the tropics or need to identify that tree in your backyard then you might be able to find the information you want here. Click here for our library inventory.

Hours

You can usually visit the library Monday - Sunday from 7am to 4pm, but to make sure it will be open please contact us, first.

Why is it The Best Library?

Our library is named after David Best, a Florida nurseryman and plant enthusiast, who was kind enough to donate hundreds of fabulous books to the Belize Botanic Gardens. The collection covers just about everything you would care to know about tropical plants and their identification, cultivation and anything else you could think of. This donation was one of the most useful resources we have ever received and we continue to add to it as we are able.