The founder of the Save the Gardens website has pledged to keep the site running even though she will be thousands of miles away helping protect the world’s oceans with Greenpeace.

The Internet site is acting as a key focal point for the campaign to stop a new hospital being built on the Botanical Gardens.

Bermudian Lisa Vickers will continue to oversee the running of the www.savethegardens.com site despite joining Greenpeace in Holland this week.

She is encouraging others to help keep it up to date with words and pictures about the ongoing campaign.

The success of the website has been astonishing, in the two months since it was set up it has generated thousands of signatures through an online petition and hundreds of comments from supporters who want the Gardens to remain a sanctuary and public open space.

But who is Mrs. Vickers and how did the cyberspace initiative take off so quickly that it now acts as the main point of information for campaigners working to save the Gardens?

Before taking up her new post as an ocean campaigner for Greenpeace in Amsterdam she and environmentalist Stuart Hayward gave their views on why the website has proved so successful and how it came about.

Mrs. Vickers has a life-long interest in the environment and environmental protection.

In 2004 she went to China as a volunteer for Greenpeace to raise awareness about genetically modified rice.

The following year she was a semi-paid worker for the campaign group in Iceland raising awareness of whaling and climate change before going to Canada as a fully-fledged Greenpeace staff member highlighting the damage caused by fishing fleets using bottom-trawling nets.

Mrs. Vickers graduated from the University of Manchester, England, with a degree in Zoology and a then completed a PhD in ecology at the University College of Cork in Ireland.

“I’ve been passionately into nature since I was a kid with an interest in habitats and endangered species such as the Bermuda Skink,” she said.

But that background in environment and ecology was not the reason why she set up the Save The Gardens website.

“Talking to people I realised it is an amazing place. I’d kind of become complacent about it and had not been to the Gardens for a while.

“I started talking to people when the hospital decision was announced and thought ‘hang on, we can’t build on the Botanical Gardens, no nation I know has ever done that’,” she explained.

The 29-year-old views a botanical garden as a signature of a civilised country, adding: “It is not just an open space. Our Botanical Gardens is priceless because there is so much that goes on here.”

Following the announcement that a redeveloped hospital would be built on 30 percent of the Botanical Gardens, Mrs. Vickers decided to get behind the growing public opinion and help to focus it through a website.

At the same time Stuart Hayward, chairman of the Environmental Coalition (ECO) that meets regularly to discuss environmental issues concerning the Island, urged those concerned about the fate of the Botanical Gardens to be creative in finding ways to express their concerns.

With previous experience of creating awareness-raising web blogs for Greenpeace, Mrs. Vickers started the website.

By some fortuitous timing she picked up the memorable website name for just $10 as no one else was registered to use it.

The impact has been startling with people logging on to keep informed about the latest campaign news, joining an online petition and posting photographs of themselves holding banners as part of a ‘virtual march’ to show support to save the Gardens.

The website also serves another important purpose in that it allows people who would normally shy away from speaking out in public to have a voice and show support.

“A lot of Bermudians do not want to speak out in public. We are providing ways for them to do this and feel comfortable, they can write comments here or on the Government website blog, and I think that is why it is so successful,” said Mrs. Vickers.

Mr. Hayward, a seasoned environmental campaigner of more than 30 years standing, said: “It’s been incredibly useful to the campaign.

“It is probably the most important tool to the campaign. It is accessible to everyone and it’s a way of getting information out and support in.”

He points out the site’s online petition allows supporters to leave comments, adding to the power of the signatures collected, and with the ability to leave photographs it shows that saving the Gardens is something supported equally by blacks and whites.

A visual reminder also came on Green Day when people from all walks of life and backgrounds wore an item of green clothing to show support. “It is wonderful to have the indications that people support the sanctity of the Gardens and know what level of support exists,” he said.

Describing the Gardens as a playground for children and “Bermuda’s wilderness” Mr. Hayward is encouraging people to turn out in force for the next big campaign event — a family day at the Gardens on November 19.