KINGSTON, R.I. – April 15, 2025 – Spring is here, and as the days grow longer and the cold retreats, it’s the perfect time to see what’s blooming. At the University of Rhode Island, there are plenty of ways to indulge your spring fever — indoors or outdoors, on-campus or online.

URI’s College of Pharmacy, in collaboration with the Department of Spatial Services and College of the Environment and Life Sciences, has launched a collaborative, public, and comprehensive database of the plant collections across URI’s Kingston Campus. Known as the URI Botanical Collections Database, this application stores a wealth of information about many of the plants that adorn the University’s campus. This new database is particularly exciting because of its many benefits to both the University and the larger public, a myriad of potential applications and the multi-pronged approach that the project encompasses.

The URI Botanical Collections Database was developed in large part by Maegan Shanaghan, URI GIS and spatial services specialist. The driving force behind the database’s design, Shanaghan helped the team implement the database, creating the feature classes, setting up the accession points across the map, joining the team’s data from its original spreadsheet into the database, troubleshooting issues, and even creating tutorials for the rest of the team to learn how to use the GIS software. 

Of the 1,200 unique species and cultivars in URI’s Youngken Medicinal Garden, Horridge Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, more than 700 have already been added to the new public database. Shanaghan says that the database “is a way to store and analyze your spatial data: anything you’d want to attach a set of geographic coordinates to, display on a map, and track the location of. In this case, it’s the plants in our botanical collections. Every point on the map is a real plant that’s been catalogued by the team.”

The application is both a database and a map, meaning that it serves as a data storage and management tool for each of the botanical collections on campus. The Botanical Gardens are a ‘living museum,’ providing a visual, interactive experience for visitors who want to learn more and take a tour of the plants housed at URI. In addition, there is information about each plant’s scientific name, native origin, conservation status, and a description about medicinal uses. Users are able to click on the map to see exactly where the plant is housed on campus, an image of the plant, and information about it.

According to Elizabeth Leibovitz, the garden coordinator for the Youngken Medicinal Garden, the database serves three overarching purposes: internal inventory management, public engagement, and fostering community pride.

Allegra Halverson, assistant manager of University farms, which serve as URI’s agricultural experiment stations, says that by managing the collections, they are able to share this information with the public on the web, through Cooperative Extension and other outreach programs on campus. “More than just a beautiful open space to enjoy, the plants here have a history, they have stories to tell,” she says. “Publishing the database gave us a way to share these plants and their stories.”

“This database is a great tool that will make it really consistent and seamless for us to manage botanical inventory, especially if people retire or move to different positions,” Leibovitz adds. “The database is a robust, long-term investment in the integrity of our collections. It’s a place where we can drop some of the institutional knowledge about the plants on our campus. This kind of knowledge can be fragile if it doesn’t have a place to live; now it does.”

The database was also created to support efforts for URI to apply for recognition as an accredited arboretum, which Leibovitz sees as going hand-in-hand with the University’s newly appointed R1 status. “If we’re an R1 university, we should have an accredited garden,” she says. “When you take the collections together, it’s an interesting and unique collection. There are some rare plants and trees. Together, once we get our database organized, we could conceive of our collections as a whole and seek accreditation for them.”

Halverson notes that the team is also working on tours: “Esri, the GIS software used to create the database, has a great tool for making map-based tours, pulling directly from our live data and displaying it in a nice storymap setting,” she says.

URI Master Gardener volunteer Philip Fong says the database opens many opportunities. “We want to make ourselves more available to the community,” he says. “We’d love to have kids from schools doing field trips here and see more departments use the garden as a teaching space for classes. There are multiple functions that open up the space. There’s also the communication side, using the database as a medium to reach out to the public allows people to use apps like Facebook, TikTok, etc., to further publicize what’s happening.”

Garden staff are still discussing additional improvements and potential uses of the database, including adding accessibility features, tours in multiple languages, information for visitors and including other botanical resources at URI. Paul Neri, manager of URI Lands and Grounds, also sees potential in using the program to manage the thousands of trees on campus. Many of these trees are part of the Everett P. Christopher Memorial Arboretum, another treasured Botanical Collection that could be added to the public database in the future. 

To visit in person, URI’s outdoor botanical collections (6 Greenhouse Road, Kingston) are open sunrise to sunset. The conservatories are open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and by appointment (Benjamin.robbins@uri.edu). Visitor parking is available.

This story was written by Yvonne Wingard, Communications Fellow in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.