Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden will conduct a database modernization and integration initiative to document and more broadly share its living collections consisting of 1,500 different types of California native plants. Project activities include hiring a Living Collections Curator, integrating three existing collection databases, and completing a comprehensive inventory of the native plant collection. The project team will migrate, validate, and reconcile living collection data, seed bank data and location data. The project will provide valuable tools to improve collections management and help staff to optimize the systematic tracking of plant health, plant condition, seed bank and propagation records and provenance. In addition, this tool will help staff track plant health over time, and cross reference impacts on the living collections due to changing climactic conditions. The updated and integrated database will be available to the public through a new online access portal.