The Bermuda Botanical Society may have to fold unless people step forward to take up executive positions.

Former president Marijke Peterich is inviting interested members to volunteer at the society’s Annual General Meeting on Sunday.

“It is very likely that we will have to close,” Ms Peterich, who has been involved with the society since 2003, told The Royal Gazette. “On Sunday, we have our AGM and we will discuss if there are people who will step forward and if the society can even continue.”

According to Ms Peterich, there has been “less and less interest” since the society gave up the visitors’ centre in the Botanical Gardens in 2011.

“From then on we’ve really been in decline,” she said. “I find the whole thing rather sad.

“Our aim used to be to support the Botanical Gardens. But the Botanical Gardens are no longer what they used to be.

“There is no will to keep it the Botanical Gardens. Parks has enough to do as it is, and it’s just another park to them.”

The society was founded in 1985 to support the Botanical Gardens and it ran a little café and shop before taking over the visitors’ centre.

One member, who was formally very active after joining in 2001 but asked not to be named, said the society meant a “great deal” to her.

“My grandfather was an amazing gardener,” she said. “I did not inherit that talent and I just love being in gardens.

“So many people think that we go to the grocery store to get everything. We don’t.

“Botany is relevant to our life-force in the world.

“Therefore it is critical that people do know something about it, even if they are not at the professorial level.

“They do need to realise that how we treat our plants, our trees, our flora basically, is terribly important to us having a healthy life.”

Although the society, which also used to run children’s summer camps, does not fundraise as much as it used to, she said it still hands out an annual scholarship.

It also runs tours of the Botanical Gardens although there are only a “limited number of people who are able to do that now”.

She added: “We do have fairly regular outings but unfortunately it requires executive people to run the society and it’s becoming more difficult again now to get people to stand for the positions of president, treasurer, secretary and plant sale co-ordinator.

“That is why we are reaching out to people this year in particular, so we don’t have to fold but we may have to if we can’t get sufficient people to support those positions.”

• The AGM will be held in the Horticultural Hall in the Botanical Gardens at 3pm on Sunday. For more information, visit www.bermudabotanicalsociety.org/BBS/Main.html