20 Oct Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust Awards $15,000 Grant to Powell Gardens
Powell Gardens was recently awarded a $15,000 grant from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust to implement and maintain a modern plant database, purchase a label machine, and install new signs that display taxonomic information for current living plants. This project directly aligns with the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust’s funding interest to promote environmentally responsible introduction, cultivation, and distribution of plants which have ornamental horticultural value through supporting collections management software and interpretation tools for ornamental plants.
The Gardens will acquire the IrisBG database that supports emerging technologies such as GIS mapping. It also comes with Garden Explorer, a module that allows visitors to explore gardens and collections on their own. This database will allow horticulture staff to document and maintain essential information, including taxonomic and nomenclatural information, provenance, plant performance, location information, life history, location on the ground, and genetic information. This will inform the Gardens’ conservation, education, research, and garden maintenance efforts.
The label machine is an integral part of garden curation and education. Powell Gardens is a living museum and just as a curator interprets the museum’s objects, horticulture staff interpret the Gardens’ living specimens through labels and signage. The Gardens have been using the same engraver for 20 years. The existing engraver has reached the end of its life span, has become increasingly unstable, and is currently not operational. The Gardens plan to acquire a Gravograph LS 100, an advanced machine that can interphase with the IrisBG database and generate various types of graphics and symbols to incorporate into labels. Powell Gardens staff and volunteers will use this new label machine to create and install new signage for the existing plant collection to provide improved and uniform interpretation garden wide.
Powell Gardens (the Gardens) is located less than an hour from downtown Kansas City and serves as the region’s only botanical garden. The Gardens’ mission is to be an experience that embraces the Midwest’s spirit of place and inspires an appreciation for the importance of plants in our lives. The 970-acre site reflects the Midwest landscape, featuring cultivated botanical gardens and uncultivated forests, prairies, and lakes. The botanical gardens include plant collections, various themed gardens, and meadows.