Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Additional Plants: herbs, native plants, ornamentals, trees

• Ecosystem: Ecosystem

• Natural Areas: forestry (conifer), forestry (hardwood), wildlife

• Pollinators: habitat

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: decision support system, forecasting, monitoring/scouting, prevention, weed ecology

• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity

This proposal would provide funding for the Public Gardens as Sentinels against Invasive Plant (PGSIP) Working Group, which began in 2018 with funding from the North Central Integrated Pest Management Center (NCIPMC). PGSIP is an invasive plant species prevention initiative that involves monitoring potentially invasive plant taxa, and determining thresholds for action. The working group collaborates with botanic gardens and arboreta on identifying plants from their living collections that are escaping from cultivation and preventing their introduction into the horticulture trade and naturalization within the regional flora. The Morton Arboretum leads the working group, which has participants from the public garden sector, academia, and organizations focused on preventing invasive species. 

In 2024 we will build PGSIP data collection into public garden standard operating procedures through a collaboration established with collection management software providers (Brahms, Iris BG, and BG-BASE) earlier this year. This collaboration will streamline the collection, query, and export process for PGSIP data for participating gardens. The working group will provide training to public gardens on how to utilize the new products and processes developed by each software provider. We will also refine and enhance the PGSIP database to ease the entry, editing, and retrieval of PGSIP data by both participating gardens and program staff. We will increase the number of gardens providing data to PGSIP using a proven model of regional data entry workshops. An increased number of gardens enrolled in PGSIP, increases the population of data in the PGSIP database, and our ability to report actionable data to stakeholders via PGSIP Alerts and new Data Dashboard. Both are designed to bring awareness and promote voluntary action from industry around plant taxa that have been observed as problematic within public gardens. The working group will continue to meet monthly, provide quarterly introductory webinars, issue a bi-annual newsletter, and provide one-on-one assistance to gardens as needed. 

This project has 4 primary objectives: 1)incorporate PGSIP into garden standard operating practices, 2)expand the use of the PGSIP Guidelines and Database by gardens in the NCIPMC region, 3)share program data across the PGSIP network, and 4)assess the DEIA of PGSIP products and outreach materials and identify DEAI-related barriers to garden participation.