Maintenance Plans, a Management Tool for Living Plant Collections.

Fiona Powrie & Ian Oliver,

National Botanical Institute, RSA

Home | Contents | Abstract | Maintenance Plans

Abstract

Maintenance Plans are being developed as management tools for the Living Plant Collections, held in the eight gardens of the National Botanical Institute, spread throughout South Africa. These plans are based on the Maintenance Plans developed by Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

Faced with the vast flora of southern Africa and limited resources, it is necessary for the National Botanical Institute to assess the value of the living plant collections in the gardens. The concept is to use the maintenance plans, not only to record the horticultural information pertaining to the collections, but to use it as a management tool to access the value of the collection. These plans will resolve two problems, the loss of information resulting from staff changes and the best allocation of resources.

The maintenance plans will cover the significance of the collection, the current status, the locality, a current business plan, horticultural maintenance, horticultural research and the rationale behind the garden display.

Maintenance Plans

The National Botanical Institute is tasked to ‘establish, develop and maintain collections of southern African plants in national botanical gardens’.

The foundation of a botanical garden lies in the living plant collections. Without living plant collections, the garden will become a park. The collections and the research around them, provide the display and educational material that makes a botanical garden. Kirstenbosch, like many other gardens, I suspect, is discovering that the emphasis of activities is moving from collections and horticulture to the other issues such as visitor facilities, concerts, security, display, restaurants and buildings.

Though we only grow the flora of southern Africa, that flora is vast and in most cases the plants are new to horticulture. Ideally, we would like to grow all 30 000 odd species and all the cultivars thereof. Realistically, resources are limited, both the people and the facilities to grow these plants. One of the strengths of the Institute is that the eight gardens are scattered throughout the biogeographical regions of southern Africa enabling the institute to grow many of the species in, or under conditions close to, their natural habitat.

To ensure that the Objectives of the National Botanical Institute are met by the Living Plant Collections and that all the horticultural staff work within a common framework ‘A Living Plant Collections Policy for the NBI’ was drawn up. This bare skeleton needs to be fleshed out for each garden providing the focus for that garden. A number of full day workshops were held, initially with the Kirstenbosch staff and later including staff from the regional gardens. These workshops had a number of purposes:

• Firstly to review our current position and gain a clear picture of the current status of our collections.
• Secondly to focus the attention of non-garden staff on the living collections.
• Thirdly to get specialist input from the research staff relevant to the living collections.
• Fourthly to put a framework in place that would support and develop living collections rather than hinder progress.

The last of these workshops was used to discuss and refine The Living Plant Collection policy. Some of the major questions raised during these workshops were:

• What plant groups?
• Why these groups?
• Where should a particular group be housed?
• In the case of the NBI which garden and where in that garden?
• How should these plants be grown?
• What horticultural research is required to successfully grow these plants?
• What is the status of our current collections?
• Are the collections working or just stamp collections?
• What are the objectives of each collection?
• How does one collate the horticultural information and observations gathered? How to regularly re-evaluate the living collections to ensure they are on track?

Though the collections policy answers What plant groups? and Why these groups? It does not answer the where, what and how questions. While pondering on how best to handle this problem we were shown copies of the very comprehensive Maintenance Plans developed by Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. The concept and ideas, in these plans, provided a very sound basis from which to develop our own. We decided that each living plant collection must have a maintenance plan that is updated annually. The plan should include:

• The significance of the collection.
  • What is the significance of the particular collection? For example the Restio Collection at Kirstenbosch is highly significant, as this family is one of the three dominant elements in Fynbos vegetation.
  • What is the horticultural, economic, educational and scientific potential of the collection?

• The Status of the collection.
  • What is the current composition of the collection?
  • How representative of the group is the collection? It was felt strongly by the NBI staff that a collection must be representative, containing the species that meet the aims of the collection, rather than a collection of all the species. This prevents valuable resources being spent on maintaining species that have no real function.
  • Are there any duplicate collections , where are they housed and are these collections necessary?
  • What is already known about the collection?
  • These points need to be updated at least annually.

• The Locality of the collection.
  • What is already known about the collection?
  • Which garden houses the main collection?
  • Are there any duplicate collections , where are they housed and are these collections necessary?
  • Nursery requirements for the collection.
  • Garden requirements for the collection.
  
  
• The Business plan for the collection.
  • Team & other role players involved.
  • Aims and Objectives, for the collection including the display and promotion of the collection. These will differ from collection to collection depending on the age and role of that collection.
  
  
• The long term goals for the collection.
• Means of achieving goals.
• Measures and checks, to monitor progress.
• Includes
  • collecting plans
  • method of collecting
  • collection protocol.
  
  
• Horticultural requirements for the collection
  • Propagation
  • Methods used
  • Research being done or needed
  
  
• Potting up
  • Handling of young plantlets.
  
  
• Care of young plantlets.
• Water requirements.
• Feeding requirements
  • Current practice.
  • Research.
  
  
• Growth Media.
  • Potting medium used.
  • Characteristics of that medium
  • Research being done or needed.

• Pests and Diseases.
  • Major problems.
  • Control programmes.
  • Research
  • Quarantine requirements for incoming material
  • Sterilisation of incoming material.
  
  
• Repotting / Planting out
  • special requirements.
  
  
• Pruning
  • what are the requirements
  • when should the plants be pruned
  • how should they be pruned.
  
  
• Seed collecting and removal of cuttings
  • - how these should be collected
  • when these should be collected
  • how should they be handled
  • how should they be stored.
  
  
• Layout of Garden Section.
  • Rationale behind layout.
  • Cultivation practice.

These plans would serve a number of functions.

• The significance of the collection justifies
  • why that plant group has been selected
  • how it fits into the criteria set out in the Living Collections Policy.

• The status of the collection
  • records changes within the composition of the collection
  • justifies why the collection should be kept
  • states the expectations from that collection.

• The locality of the collection
  • ensures the best use of resources to develop and maintain the collection.

• The business plan for the collection
  • sets the criteria by which the collection is measured to see if it is working for the institute.
  • records the development of the collection
  • states the requirements to optimise that development.

• The horticultural knowledge behind the collection
  • is written down and constantly expanded on. So the problem of specialist staff leaving with all their knowledge would be partly alleviated.

• General guidelines will exist so that general staff can maintain the collection when there was no specialist. We have held several collections up to 18 months, while waiting for the post to be filled by in house staff still in training.
• New collection specialists will not have to go back to the beginning when taking over an established collection, the guidelines and rationale behind the collection would be recorded.

This may sound idealistic, but some of the information already exists and merely needs to be collated. If maintenance plans are implemented as part of an annual review programme, by which the collection and the specialist in charge of that collection are evaluated, an ordered written record for each collection will be kept and developed. The longer-term value of this process is that the information gathered would form the basis of future publications, in fact, with some of our older collections publications have been submitted as part of the maintenance plans.

Plans of this nature enable managers to make clear informed decisions with regard to the living plant collections that form the backbone of the garden.

• Resources will be allocated to where they are most needed.
• Stagnant stamp collections will be highlighted and either de-accessioned or given a new lease of life with clear goals.
• Needs-driven research projects, often benefiting more than one collection, can be set up.
• Voids that need to be addressed will be identified.

Clear well-structured maintenance plans for all living plant collections within a botanic garden provide a useful management tool for the running of that garden.