Inspiring new generations with a love of plants: €400,000 for Radio Botanica

Good news for the University Museum Utrecht (UMU), Sonnenborgh Museum & Observatory and Utrecht University Botanic Gardens. The partnership will receive a cheque for €400,000 from the VriendenLoterij for the Radio Botanica project. The aim of Radio Botanica is to bring plants and people closer together in a humorous way through three interactive mini-museums. These will be located in the gardens of the three Utrecht organisations from the end of 2027.

Femke den Boer, director of UMU: We want to pollinate new generations with a love of plants. Plants are essential for our oxygen, food, medicines and solving major challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. With Radio Botanica, we give plants a voice and inspire a wide audience in an accessible and humorous way. It's fantastic that the VriendenLoterij is helping us to achieve this with this donation.

What is Radio Botanica?

Radio Botanica consists of interactive audio installations designed as historical or futuristic botanical laboratories. Each of the three locations will have a mini museum in the garden.

Visitors will travel back in time to the seventeenth century (Sonnenborgh), the eighteenth century (University Museum) and to the present or even the future (Botanic Gardens). They will listen to audio stories in which plants tell their own stories, performed by well-known actors and comedians.

Every year, new plants and new stories are introduced. This ensures that the project continues to develop. Radio Botanica will remain open to visitors for at least five years and will then become a permanent feature of the three locations. 

It is inspiring to see how these three Utrecht-based organisations are seeking to draw attention to a topical issue in a creative and cultural way. We are delighted to support this, with thanks to our participants!

For this project, we are collaborating with the successful audio story creators at Groene Oren. In addition to the generous contribution from VriendenLoterij, Radio Botanica is also receiving significant funding from the K.F. Hein Fund to help realise this project.