President’s view Chris Russell, BGANZ President
Plant science: research in botanic gardens We all know that botanic gardens come in different shapes and
Chris Russell
sizes. Diversity is one of the lovely things about our organisation, with garden membership ranging from the larger capital city gardens to leaner affairs flourishing through the efforts of volunteers, sometimes without any paid employees whatsoever. My view is that we are all involved in plant science in some way, even if it is just through the display of scientific names on plant labels or understanding and documenting the curatorial treatment that brings the best (and worst!) out of our living collections. This issue of Botanic Gardener showcases the fundamental importance of science (in all its shades) in underpinning our critical efforts in plant conservation. In the more ‘hard core’ plant research category, our congratulations go to Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust Sydney with the recent launch of the Australian Institute of Botanical Science, bringing together the living collections, scientific collections and plant research and education elements under the one banner for increased impact on global biodiversity conservation. It is a very exciting development. For the less academic, I hope you enjoyed, or even participated in, the sharing of the ‘power of plants’ stories throughout May by joining the #plantchallenge. More details on this and Botanic Gardens Day activities in the next edition, including our live panel discussion hosted by the ever-generous Costa Georgiadis. Great progress has been made on the procurement of a plant record management system for BGANZ members with the tender process now completed and an anticipated launch (drum roll!) in July. If you are new to this story, we conducted a survey of our members in 2019 which showed a high level of dissatisfaction with current plant records systems, and strong support for BGANZ to take a lead role in facilitating the roll out of an affordable, user-friendly system that would meet the needs of gardens large and small and allow better sharing of information about our collections. We have selected a new product called Hortis developed by the experienced team at Botanical Software. This cloud-based system is fully compatible with mobile devices and tablets so that it can be used in the field as well as back in the office, and a recent demonstration to the BGANZ Council showed a layered and intuitive setup that I think will be attractive to users. BGANZ has negotiated for any Member Garden in the network to receive the program under special terms. Any garden joining in the first year gets the second year absolutely free. This project was established by Tex Moon and the BGANZ Victoria team. Victorian gardens are being supported by a grant under the State government’s Growing Victoria’s Botanic Gardens program. Victorian gardens get two years free subscription. A huge shout out to the team led
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THE BOTANIC GARDENer | ISS 56 WINTER 2021
