Practical guidance for documenting and managing living plant collections

The Guide to Accessioning Living Collections provides a practical framework for botanic gardens and other institutions to improve the documentation and management of their living plant collections. Good documentation is fundamental to a botanic garden. It enables plants to be traced throughout their life cycle, supports collection management and strategic decision-making, and helps gardens understand the significance and conservation value of their collections.

The guide introduces the key principles and processes involved in accessioning, including:

• why living collections should be documented
• what constitutes an acquisition and an accession
• how accession numbers are assigned
• how to record provenance
• how to undertake stocktaking and manage deaccessioning
• the key fields needed to create useful and traceable accession records
• how accession data can contribute to wider conservation efforts.

The guide has been developed through collaboration with botanic gardens and collections specialists from around the world, bringing together practical experience and emerging approaches to living collections documentation. It is designed as a practical and adaptable framework, recognising that gardens use different collections management systems, processes and levels of documentation.

Supporting good collections management and BGCI Accreditation

The guide also supports gardens working towards BGCI Botanic Garden Accreditation.

BGCI’s Accreditation Standards recognise documented living collections as a fundamental component of a botanic garden. The standards include targets for maintaining permanent living collections in a plant records database, uploading plant records to PlantSearch and sharing collections data. The guide is not an accreditation standard itself. Instead, it provides practical guidance that gardens can use to develop and review their own collections policies, accessioning procedures and documentation practices in support of good collections management and the principles of BGCI Accreditation.

From good documentation to global conservation

A well-documented accession is valuable to an individual garden. When comparable information is shared across institutions, it becomes a much more powerful resource.

BGCI’s PlantSearch provides a global platform for sharing information about living collections.  PlantSearch Accessions functionality extends this to accession- and specimen-level information, enabling gardens to share richer information about the origin, history, location and status of their living collections. The Guide to Accessioning Living Collections complements PlantSearch Accessions and defines the concepts used int he tool.

Together, the guide and PlantSearch Accessions support a common approach. The information generated through well-documented collections can help identify conservation gaps, inform acquisition priorities, support research and restoration, and strengthen collaboration between gardens.

As highlighted in BGjournal 23.1, Living Collections and Data in Botanic Gardens, “data is as vital as the plants themselves.” Improving how information is recorded, shared and applied can strengthen the collective contribution of botanic gardens to safeguarding plant diversity.