TYUP™

"Transforming Your Understanding of Plants™"

Why you want to experience our "TYUP™" Tour

Here at the Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai, we provide a garden tour to visitors and guests as a way to experience our Gardens. This is not simply a standard garden tour showing off our collections, but an educational tour that will aid you in discovering how important plants are to our lives, past, present and future. In essence, you will learn "Why Plants Matter."

During your 90 minute TYUP™, we stress the importance of plants to our lives, our environment, and the future of both. By sharing information on human uses of plants over the centuries (ethnobotany), current uses of plants in technological applications (21st Century botany) and stressing how plants are more like humans than we realize, we will transform your understanding of plants™. This is the essence of the visitor experience at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort. Instead of seeing plants as simply a green backdrop or landscaping tool , you will come away with seeing plants as our vital green lifeline; of seeing "Plants as Partners™".

Plants are essential to our existence and in order to preserve and protect them and the ecosystems they build and support, we need to see them for their true value and worth. We also hope to change the perception that we are masters of our domain and here to rule the world, taking whatever we want from the plentiful bounty of nature. We know that the reserves of nature are not limitless and we are running into shortages of many fundamental components for our survival: fresh water, fish, arable land, to name a few. We are all part of one biosphere and all organisms are interdependent on one other for survival.

Lastly, on your TYUP™ we will introduce you to some newer terms, such as phenology, eukaryota and phylogenetics, and briefly refresh your memory of Linnaean taxonomy - the basis for our anthropocentric views. While this might sound a bit intimidating, it is actually just the opposite. You will walk away feeling enriched and intrigued.

Our Gardens feature some very interesting plants including a carnivore, plants with edible fruits, plants used as medicinal compounds and plants that grow up to 3 feet in 24 hours. We have something to interest everyone from lovely orchids and Key's natives to stately palms and spiny cycads. Our TYUP™ will guide you through these green resources and help better understand your perspective on plants, from one of background greenery to one of indispensable partners.

We must look to the future for sustainable solutions inspired by plants and their functions. Did you know that plant leaves inspired solar panel development? And did you know that plants communicate? This is TYUP™. We are spreading the word about 21st Century Botany! Come join me and be fascinated!

Still not convinced? Read one of our blog posts: http://thebotanicgardensatkonakai.blogspot.fr/2014/12/the-importance-of-our-transforming-your.html

Top Ten Reasons You Want To Take a "TYUP™" Tour

10. Interested in Florida Keys history? - Come hear about Key lime, pineapple and coconut cultivation.

9. Learn many different stories about our uses of plants over the centuries from bamboo to Spanish moss.

8. Find out what solar panels, industrial coatings, robots and genetic engineering have in common.

7. We share about 25% of our DNA with rice! Plants are more like us than you realize.

6. Plants have sex - get a brief anatomy lesson on plant reproduction.

5. You need to come smell the flowers, literally, and learn why plants are fragrant.

4. Where does fruit come from anyway? Come in for a botany refresher and to taste some of our garden-grown tropical fruits.

3. Without plants, we wouldn't be here! Discover the importance of having "Plants as Partners™".

2. Be enlightened and lift the veil on plant blindness, 'see' plants as more than background greenery.

1. We will "Transform Your Understanding of Plants" and botany!

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