Cultivating Collaborative Conservation | February Coffee Chat 2025

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”  -Helen Keller

Our February Coffee Chat was given by Cristina Salvador, Director of Science and Conservation at Santa Fe Botanical Garden. She provides practical advice to getting started as a young garden.

The topics covered during this Coffee Chat include:

• Conservation Science in your Mission Statement
• Santa Fe's efforts with Ex situ Conservation, Seed Banking, Herbarium Specimens and more
• Building local capacity for education and programs
• The value of partnerships

Thanks to all of you who joined us! The Coffee Chat attendees were a good mix of users with 64% intermediate users, 14% of users identifying as novice, 21% advanced users.
The institutions practice conservation Ex situ and are spread out in their other efforts, In situ, seed banking, keeping an herbarium or other germplasm.
Most gardens are forming partnerships with other gardens and then a mix of other governmental and non governmental conservation focused organizations.

The map below shows the gardens and arboreta represented by those who registered for the Coffee Chat - home offices not taken into consideration.   

A few of Cristina's recommendations for how to get started:

• Add 'Conservation' in your mission statement. It helps to focus the board and your activities.
• Create partnerships and get to know the plant societies, universities, non profits, and government programs that are conservation focused.
• Visit Gardens that are nearby and learn about what they are doing
• Watch for funding to cover internships, outsourcing propagation to a grower.
• Get to know how other IrisBG users are entering the data into IrisBG 
• Check out the Data Driven Conservation Coffee Chat!