Plant Collection Inventory: Faster, Less Painful and Repeatable [Pacific Session]

Practical Insights from the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens

Many gardens struggle with a silent challenge: the inventory gap between what's on paper and what's actually in the ground. As plants die, shift locations, or lose their tags, records quietly fall out of sync - until someone questions the data.

Keeping inventory up to date feels like an uphill battle. The process is deeply rooted in old-school habits: walking the garden with clipboards, juggling paper maps, and spending hours rekeying notes at a desk. Because it's so labour-intensive, most gardens treat inventory as a periodic rescue mission rather than a daily routine - leaving them stuck in a constant loop of outdated data.

With over 200 years of history and more than 78,000 plant specimens, the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens faces the challenge of keeping accurate records across a large and diverse living collection. Join Laura Williams and Brian Quinn as they share how they approach plant collection inventory, the lessons they've learned along the way and how they're working to make the process more manageable and repeatable.

Join us to learn:

• How to plan and run an inventory without overwhelming your team
• What changes when you record data directly in the field
• How to build a sustainable, repeatable inventory process
• Targeted vs. periodic inventory: when to check everything and when to check what's most likely to have drifted

Who should attend
Curators, collections managers, horticulturists, volunteer coordinators and directors at botanical gardens, arboreta, zoos and other living collections, whether you're planning your first inventory or looking to make your current one easier to sustain.

Speakers

• Laura Williams - Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
• Brian Quinn - Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
• Hosts: Havard Ostgaard & Jamie Penn - Hortis