Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Additional Plants: ornamentals

• Ecosystem: Ecosystem

• Natural Areas: wildlife

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: behavioral control, cultivation, decision support system, prevention

• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity

Public Gardens as Sentinels against Invasive Plants (PGSIP) is an initiative calling upon public gardens across the United States and Canada to monitor their collections for plants escaping from cultivation and to share their data with the broader garden network to help prevent future plant escapes. Following initial support in 2018, we are seeking a maximum of $20,000 in additional funding from the North Central Integrated Pest Management Center (NCIPMC) to continue supporting a working group in 2021. This fourth round of funding will support the continuation of the working group’s past three years of effort, and will specifically do the following:

1. Continue to roll out the program to gardens across North America by training public garden staff on PGSIP guidelines and newly developed database to facilitate increased participation. This will be done by hosting webinars and “office hours” throughout 2021.
2. Engage more public gardens to submit their Sentinel Lists to the database, specifically within the NCIPMC region so that trends begin to emerge about new, potentially invasive taxa that may elicit “PGSIP alerts”.
3. Develop outreach mechanisms to promote PGSIP to non-garden sector, such as propagators, the nursery industry, and invasive plant councils. This will be done with targeted communications and newsletters developed for these audiences, as well as potential conference presentations.
4. Improve BRAHMS database for user friendliness based on user feedback, and develop a dashboard that shows key metrics resulting from the database, such as number of participating gardens, number of problematic taxa submitted, and key alerts issued by PGSIP working group.

This initiative is led by The Morton Arboretum (Kurt Dreisilker), Midwest Invasive Plant Network (Clair Ryan), and University of Cincinnati (Theresa Culley) and has been supported by a working group consisting of staff members from New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, Royal Botanical Gardens – Ontario, Dawes Arboretum, Holden Arboretum, and Sustainable Conservation.

Specifically, this funding will support salaries and wages for Midwest Invasive Plant Network program staff to assist with the initiative and to make user-friendly improvements to BRAHMS

Objective 1: Expand use of PGSIP Guidelines and Database by public gardens across NCIPMC region

We will develop a targeted outreach campaign to 150 public gardens within the NCIPMC region by marketing PGISP to their curators, naturalists, and/or plant records staff. The PGSIP Working Group will host webinars and “office hours” for this group in 2021 where we will train them to develop and submit their Sentinel Lists to the database. We will focus our efforts specifically within the NCIPMC geographic region with the hope of garnering enough regional data to elicit trends. We will network with American Public Gardens Association and ArbNet to develop our list of public gardens and their respective staff members, and we will develop a bi-annual newsletter to communicate results and overall status of PGSIP, perhaps even spotlighting specific gardens in their effort to engage in PGSIP.

Objective 2: Update PGSIP Guidelines and Database based on expanded user feedback

As a greater number of gardens engage the PGSIP Guidelines and use the Database, there will undoubtedly be more feedback on both products from the new users. Despite the working group’s best efforts to consider the many different scenarios in which plants can be found escaping cultivation when developing the Guidelines, inevitably improvements and updates will be needed as more users put them into practice and provide feedback. The working group will encourage this feedback throughout 2021 and convene a working group meeting in late 2021 to incorporate it into a new iteration of the Guidelines. This new version of the Guidelines will be produced and submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal, an idea that has already emerged from previous working group conversations. Additionally, as more users upload their Sentinel Lists into the PGSIP Database, we anticipate receiving more feedback about how to improve the database user experience. We are already anticipating that Phase 2 for the database will include a user dashboard showing some basic metrics (e.g., total number of taxa with data points, number of taxa reported in each ranking category, number of gardens reporting data, number of geographic jurisdictions represented). Other improvements include improving the query function and building a research gap form that will provide gardens the ability to document issues related to the taxa they are reporting which are uncertain, unknown, or need further scientific research to resolve. Such issues might include the extent of hybridization between reported taxa and other closely related taxa and the extent to which particular cultivars contribute to escaped populations.

The working group plans to work with a consultant (Lasatek) and the database creator (Oxford University) to accomplish database improvements. The consultant is the same firm that developed much of the PGSIP Database front end and forms in 2020 and has indicated willingness to support the project in 2021. They would address the data form modifications and other key cosmetic issues presented by the expanded user feedback. The Morton Arboretum IT staff and BRAHMS creator will be engaged to enhance the structural components of the database and add a dashboard to the PGSIP database website.

Objective 3: Engage non-garden audiences within NCIPMC region

We will develop outreach communication mechanisms to promote PGSIP to non-garden sectors, such as propagators, the nursery industry, and state invasive plant councils. This will be done with targeted communications, newsletters, and “alerts'' developed for these audiences, as well as potential conference presentations (virtually, if need be), so that PGSIP becomes an effective resource for key audiences who want to understand potentially invasive plant taxa. We will also seek to diversify PGSIP working group participants to include broader participation from key non-garden sectors. In doing this, we can ensure a stronger connection with the broader green industry and continue to develop strong, reliable, and meaningful relationships with other sectors. There has been occasional contention between green industry and invasive plant organizations in determining which plant taxa are considered invasive, and we see this working group as an important bridge to foster communication between groups.

We will meet this objective by leveraging the networks of our Working Group members, many of whom are already engaged with these audiences. For example, Dr. Theresa Culley (co-PD)  is highly active with the Ohio Invasive Plant Council and the Midwest Invasive Plant Network. Ms. Clair Ryan (project staff) is the Coordinator for Midwest Invasive Plant Network, an organization with board members belonging to key sectors, and also serves on the Board of the National Association of Invasive Plant Councils. Mr. Kurt Dreisilker (co-PD) works frequently with the many partners, contractors and contributors of The Morton Arboretum across these different sectors.