Saved!!! Why horticultural experts were called in to save your Gin and Tonic

Your gin and tonic has been saved... thanks to some handy work from horticultural experts.

Juniper berries, which take two years to mature slowly on the plant, help give the popular alcoholic drink its distinctive flavour, but the native UK species is in decline.

The UK National Tree Seed Project has been set up by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to collect seeds from juniper and other UK tree species and store them in the Millennium Seed Bank to ensure they do not vanish from the countryside.

The project has “banked” 5.8m seeds from 6,500 UK trees since May 2013, with the aim of collecting seeds from all native woody plants.

Juniper is the first species to be fully collected and saved.

Some 50 collections of seeds have been made from juniper trees and shrubs across Britain.

They are taken to the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst, Sussex, where they are cleaned, dried and examined to make sure they are viable, before being stored in vaults at minus 20C.

Juniper, which is important not just for gin but supporting wildlife, is facing a range of problems including fragmented populations and difficulties regenerating successfully, as young plants are eaten by deer and rabbits.

Dr Shelagh McCartan from Forest Research, which is involved in the project, said: “Collecting viable seeds from juniper is not always easy and the berries we harvested from 43 different populations throughout Britain will not only play an important part in this conservation work but help us understand the challenges facing this iconic tree species.”