IV.9 The Chicago Botanic Garden’s plant collections, adapted to the regional climate and landscape, will be accessible and useful to its many publics; will achieve defined standards; and will continue to deepen through specialized collections that support research. The Garden will conduct a vigorous program of national and international plant exploration to diversify the collections, collect plant types better adapted to our climate, and create collections of excellence.
1. Increase the Garden’s Living Plant Collection’s genetic diversity and public outreach.
Increase the number of taxa in the Garden’s permanent plant collections by 250 net taxa (currently 9,500). (Add 150 new woody plant taxa and 200 herbaceous perennial taxa.)
Finish building the database for Siberian iris and secure taxa.
Plan next five years of international collecting with the Plant Collecting Collaborative.
Partner with Ornamental Horticulture Research staff to plan a domestic plant-collecting trip.
Add all current Chicagoland Grows introductions to the collections.
Create a plan for the collections in the Skokie Nolan Garden.
Create a plan for removing duplicate taxa and diversifying the collections.
Create a development plan for the specialized collections:
Goals for acquiring new taxa and completing each specialized collection
Complete an adaptive tree planting list for urban landscapes.
Initiate Weigela evaluation trial.
Goals
Objectives
Deliverables
Status
IV.10 The Garden will lead the world in living-plant record keeping and public access, both physically and virtually. It will also be an essential resource about plants and plant science for its many constituencies, including the public, educators, landscape architects, scientists, and local agencies and municipalities.
1. Create the best-curated living plant collection in a North American public garden.
Finish tree health assessment project and prepare conservation plan for the tree collection.
Shorten the cycle to inventory, label, and map the Garden’s collections to five years.
Create a five-year plan for collections verification.
2. Become a national and international leader in the use of technology for plant collections documentation and information dissemination.
Build a collaboration with Missouri Botanical Garden, Atlanta Botanical Garden, and Desert Botanical Garden to defray expenses associated with upgrading databases.
3. Complete collection of images and research/data entry for existing plants to support the PlantFinder/Garden application.
Process a total of 100,000 images to get 20,000 usable images.
Completed research/data entry for the remaining 1,500 taxa to finish all 7,819 taxa.
Photograph approximately 2,000 new taxa and create 14,000 images.
A. 1 The Garden will remain committed to serving the needs of all its partners and advocates, in particular the people of Cook County. The Department will proudly communicate the model public-private partnership that the Chicago Horticultural Society and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County have built together.
1. Implement a comprehensive supplier diversity plan that meets the president’s goals:
