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

Lessons from UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden’s Collections Project

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 labor-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treat inventory as a periodic rescue mission rather than a daily routine – leaving them stuck in a constant loop of outdated data. 

The UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden has tackled this challenge head-on through The Collections Project. By equipping student teams to record plant data directly in the field, they've eliminated the lag between paper notes and live records. Join Josh Brindley in this webinar as he shares how they built a streamlined inventory workflow and created collection data their team can truly rely on. 

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 

Who should attendCurators, 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

• Josh Brindley, Living Collections Curator - UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden
• Allison Keeney, Assistant Director - UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden 
• Host: Havard Ostgaard & Jamie Penn - Hortis