We are often faced with ethical quandaries in our professional lives, and charting the best course of action can be challenging. In the context of plant collections curation, such ethical conundrums may involve matters of collections monetization,...

Sustainable international collaborations involve a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship that is frequently unique to both institutions. Each of the presenters in this session have distilled the essence of success and come prepared to share with...

A well-developed trialing program can benefit a public garden, its visitors, and the horticulture industry as a whole. Successful plants with proven performance create beautiful displays that engage the public and showcase the living landscape. The...

Public garden living collections are dynamic and often the best efforts of plant recorders cannot keep pace with the volume of new arrivals, transplants, propagation, phenology observations, and removals. An informal study at Chicago Botanic Garden (...

GM plants are the result of one of the most rapidly adopted plantbased technologies ever deployed. In the U.S. alone, hundreds of millions of people and billions of farm animals have been consuming products from these crops for more than 15 years. GMOs...

Centennial Trees is a nine-year-old outreach program of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens that educates the community on the importance of planting locally-sourced native tree seedlings in public spaces. Trees selected for the program are determined to...

Museum Hill in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is home to the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, four varied museums, the largest annual gathering of international folk artists, and the National Park Service. Three years ago these diverse organizations came together to...

This full-day workshop guides participants through both a big picture overview of Core Documents and on-the-ground details necessary to propel garden museums along the continuum of excellence. This participatory environment walks through the...

Are you sometimes frustrated with your partner? Your public garden partner, that is! Public gardens operating within “dual-governance” (between a non-profit organization and governments or universities) often...

Earth has daunting climatic and socioeconomic challenges. Gardens wish to do their part in preserving biodiversity, but best practices are essential when working with and protecting wild populations. We will...

Botanical gardens and their living collections have unique but underutilized resources for plant biology research. Living collections are essentially large common gardens able to advance fields of genetics,...

Digitization, integration, and optimization of collections data can pay dividends across the board from management efficiency to innovative research activity. Unfortunately, this data often remains...

To be tenable in the modern age, botanical gardens are obligated to be more than just display gardens but are called to be active parts of their community, both locally and globally. An open-propagation...

Heirloom vegetables, heirloom roses… how about heirloom viburnums? What’s happening to older cultivars of genera that don’t have a special interest group championing their cause? This session will explore the...

Native cultivars (“nativars”) are being developed at a rapid pace by the nursery trade. Despite marketing efforts to convince the gardening public of their value in wildlife landscaping, little is known about...

Climate change is affecting public landscapes now. Research into managing existing landscapes and designing new ones is critical if our parks and gardens are to adapt. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a...

As climate change places continued pressure upon wild-plant populations, botanical gardens and arboreta become increasingly indispensable conservation agents. Not only are collection managers faced with harder...

Arboreta and gardens have an ability to fill an important role in germplasm conservation by participating in ex situ collections. Globally, trees are facing a human-driven mass extinction, and our native flora...

Invasive plant species can grow in natural areas even as they are commercially available throughout that region. When this happens, private, commercial, and government sectors may have different perspectives...

Plant Collections Network Manager, Pam Allenstein, provides an overview of the Plant Collections Network.