4:09 p.m., June 2, 2009----Five first year fellows in the University of Delaware's Longwood Graduate Program (LGP) departed on June 1 for a three-week visit to public horticulture institutions in China.

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Joined by two representatives from Longwood Gardens, the group will visit a wide variety of public gardens in Beijing, Kunming, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai. In addition to touring the grounds, they will meet with upper level managers of the gardens and representatives from the Chinese Institute of Botany.

The fellows will be blogging about their experiences throughout the trip.

“The international experience allows our students to develop international networking prospects and to be goodwill ambassadors of UD, Longwood Gardens, and the (Longwood Graduate) program,” says Bob Lyons, professor and director of the LGP.

International Experience (IE) may be one of the most extraordinary experiences available to Longwood Graduate Fellows. Through IE, first year fellows are exposed to foreign venues of public horticulture and their administration. They experience a variety of cultures and customs, protocol and procedures unlike those within the U.S., new ecosystems and their fragility, unique agricultural impacts, and new and known plants in their native habitats along with the coexisting fauna.

The experience is planned, with guidance, by the group of first year fellows shortly after arriving in the program. They are always accompanied by chaperones from the University of Delaware, Longwood Gardens, and/or from the destination country or countries. Past IE trips have traveled to such locations as Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Chile, and Easter Island.