National collections programs
Jane McGary (Sat, 12 Jun 2004 14:25:52 PDT)

Alan Meerow mentioned

The National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) of USDA-Ag Research Service, for
whom I work, is trying to forge a cooperative integration with AABGA member
gardens by which participating garden collections would be essentially be
accessible through the NPGS. ...Our Germplasm Repository in Pullman, WA
maintains an allium collection.

Alan, do you think the curator of the alliums would like to receive
offerings (from documented wild seed) from PBS members such as Mark
McDonough and myself, who grow a lot of them? If so, whom should we contact?

As for systematic beds, there is a fairly systematic Penstemon collection
at the Leach Botanical Garden in Portland, Oregon, and I seem to recall
systematic beds at the botanic garden of Mt. Holyoke College in
?Massachusetts. Surely there are many more such installations in botanic
gardens around North America. The Rhododendron Species Foundation garden
near Seattle has rhododendrons, of course, but I think they also have
collections of other ericaceous genera such as Gaultheria. And of course
there are great arboreta in many parts of the continent, such as the Hoyt
Arboretum near where I live, which has many systematic tree collections,
especially of conifers and magnolias.

Diane Whitehead mentioned the Oregon Garden in Silverton. You can forget
the idea of systematic collections there -- it was conceived as a showplace
for the nursery industry, and they are moving farther and farther from what
many of us dreamed it could be, i.e. Wisley West.

Large collections of bulbs are perhaps better maintained by individuals
than by botanic gardens, since in the latter a premium (with funding
implications) is usually set on permanent display, and there's always the
danger of theft of real rarities. Of course, there are BGs with great bulb
collections, notably Kew in England and Gothenburg (Goteborg) in Sweden. I
think you really need one or two truly committed individuals to keep a bulb
collection going, as witness what happened at the UC Berkeley Botanic
Garden. Also, it's sometimes necessary to control predators by means not
acceptable to BG advisory committees; when I asked why there were so few
bulbs at the UC Santa Cruz BG, I was told that rabbits had eaten them and
that it was considered unethical to trap and kill the rabbits. No such
scruples around my place!

Just a few thoughts.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA