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Shaping the Future of Horticulture on a Global Stage
Global Horticulture Council
The Global Horticulture Council is Expo 2031’s leadership platform for translating Human / Nature into action bringing together partners, associations, companies, designers, researchers, innovators, and civic leaders to help shape the horticultural, environmental, technological, health, food, and legacy dimensions of America’s first A1 International Horticultural Exposition.
Behind Expo 2031 is a growing platform of people and organizations working together to elevate horticulture as essential infrastructure for the future.
A Leadership Platform for Human / Nature
Expo 2031 Minnesota, USA is built around a powerful theme:
Human / Nature — Where Humanity and Horticulture Meet.
The Global Horticulture Council exists to help translate that theme into strategy, programming, design, partnerships, public engagement, and long-term legacy.
As Expo 2031 advances toward opening day, the Council provides a collaborative platform for leaders across horticulture, agriculture, food systems, water, energy, health, technology, climate resilience, pollinators, design, education, tourism, and future living.
The Council helps ensure that Expo 2031 is not only a six-month event, but a global development platform for the future of plants, people, communities, and the planet.
Why the Council Matters
It is connected to some of the most important questions facing the world:
How do we design healthier communities?
How do we protect pollinators and biodiversity?
How do we grow food more efficiently and resiliently?
How do we help cities adapt to heat, water stress, and biodiversity changes?
How do we connect people to nature in daily life?
How do we use technology to better understand living systems?
How do we build places that improve human health and wellbeing?
How do we leave a legacy beyond a major global event?
The Global Horticulture Council brings these questions into focus.
It connects the expertise of the horticulture industry with the scale and visibility of Expo 2031 helping move ideas from conversation to experience, from research to demonstration,
and from sector leadership to public understanding.
The Council’s Role
The Global Horticulture Council serves as a working leadership platform for Expo 2031.
Its role is to help guide, inform, and strengthen the Expo’s development across key areas:
Climate Zone Programming
Expo 2031’s visitor experience will be organized around major climate stories, including Arid, Tropical, Temperate, Continental, and North Star environments.
The Council helps shape how these climate zones tell meaningful stories about plants, people, culture, adaptation, water, food, biodiversity, design, and resilience.
Each zone becomes more than a landscape. It becomes a living classroom, a partner platform, and a public experience that connects visitors to the realities and possibilities of life in a changing world.
Pollinator Strategy
Pollinators are central to Expo 2031’s story.
Through the Global Pollinator Network, Expo 2031 is building a public-facing biodiversity platform that connects gardens, schools, cities, parks, companies, farms, and countries through pollinator habitat, data, education, and action.
The Council helps align pollinator strategy with horticulture, technology, public engagement, youth programming, partner activation, and legacy outcomes.
Health and Wellbeing
Plants shape human health.
From restorative gardens and urban tree canopy to food, mental health, physical activity, air quality, community connection, and nature-based design, horticulture plays a growing role in public wellbeing.
The Council helps Expo 2031 explore how gardens, landscapes, living systems, and future communities can support healthier lives.
Technology and Experience
Expo 2031’s Technology Spine will help visitors personalize their journey, understand living systems, discover programming, interact with partners, and connect with the Expo story in new ways.
The Council helps ensure that technology supports the Expo’s central purpose: deepening the relationship between people and nature.
Technology should not replace the living experience. It should reveal it, interpret it, and make it more meaningful.
Food Systems and Agriculture
Horticulture connects directly to food security, controlled environment growing, sustainable agriculture, seed systems, supply chains, nutrition, and the future of farming.
The Council helps Expo 2031 create space for growers, food producers, agricultural innovators, researchers, and companies to demonstrate how plants feed people and shape communities.
Water, Energy, and Climate Infrastructure
The future of horticulture is inseparable from the future of water, energy, soil, and climate resilience.
The Council helps connect Expo 2031’s landscapes and programs to larger infrastructure questions: how we manage water, design resilient places, reduce waste, use resources wisely, and create communities that work with natural systems.
Legacy Planning
Expo 2031 is designed to live beyond 2031.
The Council helps guide legacy thinking across the USA Pavilion, Global Pollinator Network, future living district, horticulture collections, public education, partner programs, and regional impact.
The question is not only what visitors will experience during the Expo.
The question is what Expo 2031 will leave behind.
Council Priorities
1. Elevate Horticulture as Essential Infrastructure
The Council positions horticulture as a critical system for climate adaptation, health, food, water, biodiversity, community design, and quality of life.
2. Build a Global Platform for Growers and the Green Industry
Expo 2031 creates an unprecedented opportunity to place growers, breeders, garden designers, landscape professionals, public gardens, plant scientists, and green industry leaders on a global stage.
3. Translate Expertise into Public Experience
The Council helps convert complex ideas into experiences visitors can see, touch, feel, learn from, and take home.
4. Connect Sectors That Do Not Always Work Together
Horticulture intersects with technology, healthcare, agriculture, tourism, education, real estate, energy, water, design, public policy, and culture. The Council creates a platform for those sectors to collaborate.
5. Strengthen Expo 2031’s Long-Term Legacy
The Council helps ensure that Expo 2031 creates lasting value for Minnesota, the United States, the horticulture industry, international participants, and future generations.
A Foresight Framework for Expo Development
The Global Horticulture Council supports Expo 2031 through an annual foresight framework that aligns partner insight with the Expo’s development timeline.
2026: Legacy / Mission
The first stage focuses on Expo 2031’s purpose, mission, long-term value, and legacy opportunity.
This includes the role of horticulture as essential infrastructure, the future of pollinators and biodiversity, the USA Pavilion’s national story, and the foundational direction for Expo’s living systems.
2027: Experience / Technology
The second stage focuses on how visitors will experience Expo 2031.
This includes the Technology Spine, immersive storytelling, digital interpretation, climate zone experiences, partner activations, data-enabled horticulture, and the balance between nature and innovation.
2028: Programming / Future Living District
The third stage focuses on public programming, education, future living, cultural participation, horticultural displays, partner demonstrations, and the long-term district legacy that continues after the Expo closes.
Global Horticulture Council Calendar
2026
Quarterly Meetings
March
June
September
December
GHC Delegation Opportunities
March / AIPH Spring Meeting, Sydney, Australia
June / Summer Foresight Session, St. George's House, Windsor, UK
July / AmericanHort Cultivate'26
September / AIPH Congress, Bari, Italy
2027
Quarterly Meetings
March
June
September
December
GHC Leadership Opportunities
March / AIPH Spring Meeting / Vancouver, BC
Expo 2027 Yokohama / GHC Leadership Delegation, International Partner Meetings
Specialised Expo 2027 Belgrade / GHC Leadership Delegation, International Partner Meetings
July / AmericanHort Cultivate'27
September / AIPH Congress / Yokohama, Japan
All Global Horticulture Council Calendar events are by invite only to Official Partner GHC Leaders
GHC Horticulture Advocates
Champions of horticulture who influence the horticulture approach, protocols, guidelines and impact of Expo 2031’s living landscapes.
Expo 2031 Founding Partners
The Expo 2031 Global Horticulture Council is made of senior leaders, sector experts, and investor partners from across horticulture, agriculture, forestry, public gardens, sustainability, biomimetics, and related green industries.
In alignment with our Human / Nature Expo 2031 theme, we are convening the following adjacent sectors to design and develop Expo 2031 including: expo site, food production, water, energy, future technology, health & wellbeing, retail and tourism.
Together they guide the strategic vision, design intelligence, sector convening, and global alignment of the first A1 international horticultural exposition ever hosted in the United States.
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