By Liz Nye, New England Botanic Garden staff
March 2025
Anna marks the location of a cherry tree in The Court: A Garden Within Reach.
Heaps of snow still covered the ground as Anna Petrie, NEBG’s new Plant Recorder, stood by a Manchurian cherry (Prunus maackii) in The Court: A Garden Within Reach, a universally accessible garden tucked between the Limonaia and the farmhouse. Clad in a neon orange hat, Petrie looked down at an iPad, and then over to the nearby garden bed where a coincidentally matching neon orange pole was sticking up from the ground. On top of the pole sat a GPS antenna allowing Petrie to map the precise location of the cherry tree.
Botanic gardens often get described as “living museums.” Or for younger audiences—“zoos for plants.” These analogies work well: botanic gardens protect natural and cultural resources, act as engines for education and research, and often preserve valuable historic records. Of all the work, the latter—record keeping—may be the least flashy but among the most important. That’s because the knowledge held in any botanic garden, museum, or zoo collection can be extremely useful to others, but only if it is well-documented. Hence, Petrie’s midwinter tree mapping. And that’s not all.
“We’re focused on creating a really strong, streamlined collections management system from accessioning plants to labeling protocol to our living collections policy,” Petrie says. It’s work that will involve not only mapping in the gardens, but also digging through accession records, the data collected when plants are acquired and put into the ground, and maintaining new records. Petrie is thrilled to do it. She’s no stranger to plant-related research. She volunteers her time transcribing and organizing records for Harvard University Herbaria and the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Strengthening collections management at NEBG is made possible by a grant the Garden received from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in the fall of 2024. It was awarded to provide three years of funding for a full-time position.
“We were extremely honored to receive the IMLS grant—our first ever,” says Garden CEO Grace Elton. IMLS, an independent federal agency, provides vital funding to libraries and museums across the country. The American Alliance of Museums reports that IMLS represents just 0.0046% of the federal budget, and in addition to the vast community services they provide, museums alone generate $50 billion in economic impact. An executive order proposed on March 14, 2025, threatens the future of the agency and the resources it provides to communities. (Learn more about IMLS and what you can do to support it.)
“The work this grant supports will help NEBG share our important plant collections with a global audience, while also enhancing the visitor experience for those on site. It’s key to our strategic plan,” says Elton.
Petrie stepped into the new role of Plant Recorder in November 2024. She joined NEBG a little over a year earlier as an outdoor gardener working in the naturalistic spaces. Immediately, she took an interest in learning all she could about what was growing in the Inner Park areas she looked after. The work she’s doing now benefits from her perspective as an NEBG gardener. Even though plants don’t uproot and move on their own, horticulturists are constantly editing garden spaces: transplanting, adding, and removing. Petrie is familiar with the work habits of the horticulture team and can coordinate with colleagues to track changes as they occur and navigate the frenzied spring planting season when a wave of new plants is introduced into the living collections.
“I’m not a curator. I just keep up with everyone else’s ideas and intentions,” Petrie says.
The Garden’s conservatory collection includes a wide variety of tropical and subtropical plants.
Since starting in the role, Petrie has already begun a review of the Garden’s conservatory plant collection. Within the next year, she aims to build an inventory of trees and shrubs within formal and naturalistic garden spaces. Data points she’ll be documenting and tracking include accurate plant nomenclature, plant location within garden beds, current plant health, acquisition date, and plant provenance—the source or origin of the plant material.
“Part of what makes visiting the Garden so special is learning about nature, specific plants, and any conservation work related to them,” Petrie says. She points out that many people may not know that the Garden’s conservatory collection includes plants on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Botanic gardens are places of learning and conservation. When visitors wander the conservatories they may find plants on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Petrie sees potential for others to use the tools enabled by strong collections management systems in a variety of ways. The more the Garden knows about its collections, the more it can share with visitors, from those just starting to learn about plants and identify them to experienced gardeners looking to see how specific plant varieties might preform in different conditions. Enhanced curatorial practices could also enable the Garden to be a valuable resource to those conducting research or tracking changes in the landscape. For example, the American Public Gardens Association launched a network for public garden professionals to share observations of non-native plants with the potential to become invasive, and strong record keeping at the Garden could help inform this and other efforts.
“We’re excited to continue to share stories that emerge from this work with our community,” says Elton.
As spring comes to the Garden, hundreds of new plants will go into the ground. Woody plants and perennials will be accessioned. Petrie looks forward to the process.
“You can constantly be changing the aesthetics of the gardens,” she says, “but the purpose is still the collection and the specimens.”