Public Awareness and Engagement with Botanic Gardens Across the Arab Region: A Baseline Survey and Verified Institutional Inventory

The Arab world has produced almost no published data on public awareness of botanic gardens, despite having 53 institutions registered with Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) across 16 of the 22 League of Arab States (LAS) member states. Between October 2024 and December 2025, we administered an 18-item bilingual (Arabic and English) online questionnaire across the 22 LAS member states via paid Facebook advertising, complemented by an institutional inventory from BGCI GardenSearch and an Arabic–French–English triangulation that identified 16 additional non-BGCI operational institutions. Pearson and Spearman correlations between BGCI count and 6 awareness indicators were computed for the 13 countries with n ≥ 10. The survey returned 613 valid responses from all 22 nationalities. Among respondents in this Facebook-recruited sample, 87.4% had heard of botanic gardens (95% CI 84.6–89.8) and 98.9% considered them important for conservation, although only 63.5% reported familiarity with their conservation role. Local awareness ranged from 30% (Palestine) to 100% (Sudan, Lebanon). No BGCI–awareness correlation reached p < 0.05; Q5 recognition reached marginal significance (Spearman ρ = 0.525, p = 0.065). We did not detect a statistically significant association between BGCI institutional count and country-level awareness indicators. Because this analysis rests on only 13 countries, the absence of a significant correlation should not be read as evidence that no association exists. The 35-point gap between affirmation of conservation importance and functional familiarity marks the most actionable target for science communication. We disclose the limitations of Facebook-based recruitment and gender imbalance.