IrisBG's Shanna T. Jones and Laura Murray. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth! We enjoyed seeing all of you.
One of the best things about attending conferences is the opportunity to hear firsthand about the amazing work being done by IrisBG users. Sustainable practices and environmental stewardship within the public garden realm were at the forefront of most sessions this year. Educational programming to engage the community with information and skills about sustainability and other green initiatives is becoming increasingly important.
The 2024 American Public Gardens Association Annual Conference "Rooted in Resilience" occurred in the center of Boston, Massachusetts, a short walk to America's first public park and garden. As expected, the event delivered compelling discussions, great conversations, and quality time spent with the IrisBG community and the broader public garden community, too. We've returned home energized for new projects, updates, and collaborations on the horizon.
Table of Contents |
Our presentation on the IrisBG Garden Explorer:
How Plant Records Can Engage a Wider Audience
It was a pleasure to present "How Plant Records Can Engage a Wider Audience" at the APGA conference this year. If you did not attend Shanna's talk, How Plant Records Can Engage a Wider Audience, we are happy to share the presentation with you here.
Plant records may evoke images of databases and dusty boxes of files. However, botanical data can be quite dynamic and engaging. When thoughtfully interpreted and displayed with an online interface, plant data can be visually transformed to attract and benefit a variety of viewers.
Garden Explorer provides the perfect opportunity to transform plant records into narratives that will appeal to a wider demographic of garden visitors while also increasing accessibility. If you're curious to learn more, please don't hesitate to contact us any time.
Plant Curation & Conservation Track
Magnolia virginiana | Arnold Arboretum
We proudly sponsored the Plant Curation and Conservation Track again this year, a natural choice for us, and a topic that aligns with our organization's mission. The following are examples are how a few of you in the IrisBG community are approaching these themes and implementing supportive practices.
Fostering Regional Collaboration to Address Native Seed and Plant Material Needs
The Northeast Seed Network and the Restorative Landscape Coalition are two new collaborative partnerships working to combat the severe shortage of native seeds and plants available in the marketplace for the US Northeast and the Northern Mid-Atlantic States ecoregions.
The first presenter, Richard Olsen, Director, of the US National Arboretum, referenced a 2023 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report that found the country’s current supply of native seeds is already insufficient to meet the restoration needs of agencies like the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In response, Native Plant Trust, Ecological Health Network, and other partners launched the Northeast Seed Network (NSN).
One of Richard's driving points was that the eastern part of the United States shows the greatest insufficiency. Plant conservation is important for conservation's sake and sharing. It is crucial to have a supply of native plants for plant restoration after wildfires and other unpredictable environmental disasters.
Native Plant Trust Director of Conservation, Michael Piantedosi stressed the importance of sourcing seed as locally as possible to ensure local genotypes. He talked about the Ecotype Project, a farmer-led seed collective. The project offers opportunities to connect with the growing group of organizations building the Northeast Seed Network, learn about Eco59, a farmer-led seed company, and add local ecotypes to your next project.
Mt. Cuba’s Élan Alford, Plant Conservation Scientist, spoke to us about engaging with the public and growers. Élan explained that the United Nations has declared that we are in the decade of Ecosystems Restoration and America needs native seed. Of Mt. Cuba’s 1000 acres, 900 are natural lands, including ecoregion-based pollinator meadows Since being faced with a lack of seeds in the marketplace to add to their collection, Mt. Cuba collects seeds from Stoneleigh of Natural Lands and Pineland Nursery Grows.
Mt. Cuba's trials are changing. Instead of trialing one to a few species and exploring cultivars, the organization is presently conducting genera-based studies and exploring many species.
Highstead began as a native plant arboretum and is now heavily focused on conservation. They partner with seed networks and land trusts, including Planters’ Choice Nursery ecotype plugs and Urbanscapes native plant nursery. Highstead teaches interns how to germinate seeds, grow plants, and reach out to the community about the importance of plants, including farmers who have only grown annual crops in the past.
Christopher Dunn talked about the importance of building trusting relationships with Indigenous peoples. At Cornell Botanic Garden, a healing garden, Akwe:kon Full Circle Healing and Honoring Garden, was installed for the Onondaga Nation, with interpretation providing the Onondaga name and cultural value for each plant. The project aims to further bond Cornell’s Indigenous student community and to honor Indigenous students and their connection to the land.
He also spoke about the US Forest Service and Nature Conservancy funding for Monitoring and managing Ash (MaMa) a citizen science program: “Lingering Ash”.
This initiative involves grafting tissue from remaining ash trees to collect genotypes from Ohio and New York. The hope is that doing so will not only restore ash species to the landscape but also restore cultural value to Indigenous peoples who use the tree's material. Black ash has an extremely high utilitarian significance in basket weaving.
Presenters: Richard Olsen, Director, US National Arboretum, Michael Piantedosi, Director of Conservation, Native Plant Trust, Élan Alford, Plant Conservation Scientist, Mt. Cuba Center, Geordie Elkins, Executive Director, Highstead Foundation, Christopher Dunn, Executive Director, Cornell Botanic Gardens.
Pathways to Practical Collections Development
Presenters shared scalable solutions and tools such as a planning guide, self-assessment for collections standards, and a prioritization worksheet to help those applying for national accreditation through APGA's Plant Collections Network.
Presenters: Pam Allenstein, Senior Program Manager, APGA; Emily Ellingson, Curator & Assistant Director, Polly Hill Arboretum; Emily Detrick, Director of Horticulture, Cornell Botanic Gardens; Isabella Colucci, Curatorial Intern, Polly Hill Arboretum/ Former Intern, Cornell Botanic Gardens; Sarah Hedean, Living Collections Manager, Smithsonian Gardens
Conservation Through Cultural Preservation:
Building an Ethnobotanical Garden at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, NV
Springs Preserve spoke about their experience creating an ethnobotanical garden, including meaningful collaborations with tribal communities and sourcing culturally significant plant material.
Presenters: Ian Ford-Terry, Horticulturist/Archaeologist, and Lisa Windom, Preserve Manager at the Springs Preserve.
Collection Value Scoring at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens was developed around a mission to foster plant conservation, research, and education. Katherine Brewer, Curator of Living Collections, spoke about the process of using collection value scoring at CMBG to better understand how their plant collections support their mission and programming. They took a close look at data integrity, maintenance needs, and plant health, among other things.
Her outcome of value-scoring 20 percent of the collection showed that the garden’s collection was developed largely for ornamental value. Less than 1% of specimens contributed to conservation or research value and less than 10 percent of specimens have complete data. These values offered questions:
- How should plant aesthetics be scored?
- What score could be selected to indicate a need for deaccessioning?
Katherine concluded that value scoring is an evolving process and that refining the process is necessary as priorities change. As a garden’s mission and programming priorities change, value-scoring should be customized to fit.
Cleveland Botanical Garden's Costa Rica cloud forest glasshouse:
A case study in collection value scoring for curatorial decision-making
Collection value-scoring logic helped Cleveland Botanical Garden decide what plants to propagate and preserve. They also presented a humble invitation for ideas and discussion from attendees. Have anything to share? We're certain they would appreciate if you reach out to them.
Congrats to our IrisBG Community Award Winners
At each year's annual conference, the American Public Gardens Association presents a variety of awards to gardens and individuals who are doing exceptional work.
We want to congratulate everyone, but especially the members of the IrisBG community, who made up the majority of the winners.
- The Leaf at Assiniboine Park | The Dorothy E. Hansell Marketing Award
- UC Davis Arboretum | Program Excellence Awards for their Learning by Leading Program
- Kathleen Socolofsky, UC Davis Arboretum | Honorary Life Member Award
- Jaime Morin-Frye, New Fields | Professional Citation Award
- Ben Stormes, University of British Colombia Botanical Garden | Professional Citation Award
- Ray Mims, U.S. Botanic Garden | Honorary Life Member Award
Visit to Coastal Maine
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG), New England's largest botanical garden, served as a host garden for the annual conference this year. As they have been engaged members of IrisBG since 2021, Laura was excited to visit for the first time. While there, she discovered many delightful features that left a lasting impression. She shares her experience below.
I traveled “UpDa Coast” after the conference to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. It is a new garden, opened in 2007, that took 16 years of planning and sacrifice (the founders mortgaged their own homes to purchase the land for the garden). Everything about CMBG is intentional and full of purpose - from the parking lot design for filtering stormwater with plants and the education building’s solar-paneled roof, to the seasonal butterfly house. The Guest Map includes a discussion about how to read a plant label and also features information regarding pathways, indicating which ones are accessible.
To encourage visitors to learn more about their plant collection, CMBG have prominently displayed a QR code, adjacent to the large guest map, to access Coastal Maine's Garden Explorer.
QR codes are also used on seed packets in the gift shop to direct shoppers to a specific taxon's page of CMBG's Garden Explorer.
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Seed packets of Asclepias tuberosa |
By scanning the QR code, guests can read cultural information about the plant, including its hardiness zone.
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Seeing the list of locations for this plant also offers an opportunity for the guest to view the plant up close at Coastal Maine for inspiration on how to use the plant at home.
The Garden Explorer page linked to the Asclepias tuberosa seed packet.
The garden is full of opportunities for learning no matter your age. Of the 300 acres, the following gardens can be found.
Native Butterfly and Moth House - displays a planting scheme dedicated to supporting the entire life cycle of moths and butterflies native to Maine and New England
Dahlia Garden - displays eighty cultivars from all major dahlia groups.
Learning Apiary and Native Bee Exhibit - offers visitors the chance to watch honey bee families.
The Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden (pictured above) encompasses two acres of woods, ponds, and theme gardens inspired by well-known children’s books by Maine authors.
Great Lawn -This area honors the founders of the Gardens and the Lawn, organically maintained, is for visitors to walk, play, and picnic.
Giles Rhododendron and Perennial Garden -The late Ernie Egan, one of the Gardens’ founders and a former president of the American Rhododendron Society, helped select the original 100 plants that became the nucleus for the collection.
Lerner Garden of the Five Senses - Fully accessible and less than an acre in size, winding paths circle through five regions emphasizing the five senses.
Slater Forest Pond -replanted with native shrubs, trees, and water-loving plants, frogs and aquatic insects.
Cleaver Lawn -This area was designed to help build a research collection of certain plants, Benthamidia japonica being one of them.
Satellite event | IrisBG Live! at Northeastern University Arboretum
The Northeastern University Arboretum team visits us at the conference Exhibit Hall.
While in Boston, we conducted our first, in-person Coffee Chat in collaboration with the team at Northeastern University Arboretum (NUA). The event was an absolute success thanks to Indu Holdsworth, the Arboretum's Plant Recorder, Stephen Schneider, Director of Horticulture & Grounds, and the Arboretum's Student Assistants.
Indu presented the advantages and challenges of having a revolving door of student workers. It was an insightful look at how troubleshooting and routine training created a stronger foundation for the arboretum's plant recording methods. See our article, Many Hands, Many Plants | June Coffee Chat Live! 2024 for a full overview of the event and see copies of NUA's training material and student projects.
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Thank you again to all of you who made our conference experience so special, and thank you to everyone at the American Public Garden Association for making this conference yet another success!
We look forward to seeing you all in Denver next year.
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