A Lighter Approach to Field Records

Professional gardens and botanical collections have long relied on specialist systems to manage complex records and spatial data.

Tools such as IrisBG and ArcGIS have earned their place in the field. IrisBG provides the depth needed for professional botanical collection management, including accession records, provenance, taxonomy and institutional reporting. ArcGIS offers sophisticated mapping, spatial analysis and geo-database tools for organisations managing complex sites and datasets.

For many institutions, those capabilities are essential.

But not every job in a garden needs the full weight of an enterprise system.

Sometimes you are standing beside a plant and simply need to record what it is, where it is, take a photograph, update a note or add a new specimen to the map.

That is a different kind of problem.

The challenge of everyday field recording

Much of the most useful information about a garden is discovered while people are actually working in it.

• A gardener notices that a tree is declining.
• A curator finds an unfamiliar plant that needs identifying.
• Someone photographs a new planting.
• A volunteer discovers that a marker is several metres away from the plant it belongs to.
• A label has disappeared and somebody needs to establish exactly which specimen is growing there.

Individually, these are small observations. Over time, they become an important record of the collection.

The challenge is making them easy enough to capture.

Sophisticated collection-management and GIS systems can support field workflows, but they may also require specialist configuration, established data structures or training that is unnecessary for many everyday garden tasks.

For smaller teams in particular, this can create a gap between what happens in the garden and what eventually reaches the database.

• Sometimes information is written down to enter later.
• Sometimes photographs remain on someone's phone.
• Sometimes a spreadsheet is updated when somebody gets back to the office.
• And sometimes the information simply never gets recorded.

The problem is not a lack of powerful software. It is making everyday recording easy enough that people actually do it.

A garden-first approach

BotanicalMapper starts from the other direction.

Instead of beginning with the database or GIS structure, it begins with the person standing beside the plant.

Open the map on a laptop, tablet or phone, find the location, add or update the plant, attach photographs and continue with the day's work.

You do not need to design a geodatabase or understand GIS terminology before you can begin recording your garden.

And you do not always have to stop what you are doing to complete a full plant record.

If you are busy, you can simply take photographs as you work.

Where those photographs contain location information, they can later be uploaded to BotanicalMapper and used to help create and place plant records on the map. You can complete the record there and then in the field, or return to it later when you are back at a desk.

That creates a very simple fallback workflow:

See it. Photograph it. Record the detail later.

The aim is not to remove structure.

It is to put useful structure behind a workflow that feels natural to the people actually maintaining the garden.

More than simply dropping pins on a map

BotanicalMapper brings the map and the plant record together.

A plant can have its location, photographs, botanical information and other details associated with the same record, while remaining easy to find and update from around the garden.

Useful specialist services can also become part of that everyday workflow.

If you find a plant you cannot identify, Pl@ntNet can use photographs already attached to the record to suggest what it might be.

If you already have a botanical name, GBIF can help you check the accepted name and fill taxonomy such as family, genus and species.

And when somebody gives you a location as a what3words address rather than GPS coordinates, BotanicalMapper can use that three-word address to find the corresponding square and help you place the record on the map.

These tools do not replace horticultural judgement. They help make information that would otherwise require several separate systems easier to access from the same working record.

You can photograph a plant, identify it, check its taxonomy, locate it and record it without turning everyday garden work into a database project.

Designed around the living garden

This makes BotanicalMapper useful for the ongoing work that takes place between formal surveys, database projects and collection reviews.

Rather than treating mapping as a separate technical exercise, the map becomes part of the everyday plant record.

• You can see where something is, open it, update it and move on.
• Sometimes that means creating a detailed record immediately.
• Sometimes it means correcting a location.
• Sometimes it means adding photographs or checking a botanical name.
• And sometimes it simply means taking a few photographs while you are working and dealing with the details later.

A useful field system should accommodate all of those ways of working.

From working records to a public garden map

The same information can also support something outward-facing.

BotanicalMapper makes it straightforward to create a public map showing selected plants and landmarks to visitors.

You do not need to build a completely separate visitor mapping system and then maintain the same information twice.

Your working collection remains the source.

As plants are added, moved, photographed or updated, the information available to the public can be kept up to date from the same underlying records.

• That means a single plant record can serve several purposes.
• It can help the garden team locate and manage the plant.
• It can preserve photographs and botanical information.
• It can contribute to the long-term record of the collection.
• And, where appropriate, it can help visitors explore and understand the garden through a public map.

For gardens that open to the public, this considerably shortens the distance between maintaining good internal records and sharing useful information with visitors.

Different tools for different jobs

BotanicalMapper is not intended to reproduce every capability of a specialist collection-management system or enterprise GIS platform.

That would defeat much of the point.

If an organisation needs detailed accession management, complex provenance records, specialist institutional reporting or advanced spatial analysis, established professional systems provide capabilities specifically designed for those requirements.

BotanicalMapper concentrates on another layer of garden management:

• recording plants, landmarks and other garden features;
• placing them on an interactive map;
• adding and managing photographs;
• creating and placing records from photographs and their locations;
• identifying unknown plants with Pl@ntNet;
• checking botanical names and taxonomy with GBIF;
• finding and placing locations using GPS or what3words;
• maintaining useful botanical and practical information;
• updating records while working around the site;
• completing records later when field time is limited;
• making the collection accessible to a wider garden team;
• creating and maintaining a public-facing visitor map.

For some gardens, that may be all they need.

For others, BotanicalMapper can sit alongside more specialised systems.

The two approaches do not have to compete.

Keeping your data useful

Choosing a simpler workflow should not mean giving up control of your records.

Garden data can represent years - sometimes generations - of work.

People change jobs. Software changes. Organisations grow. Requirements change.

That makes portability important.

BotanicalMapper is designed around structured records that can be exported in standard formats, allowing information to move beyond the platform when required.

A garden can therefore use BotanicalMapper as an active working system without assuming that BotanicalMapper must always be the final destination for every piece of information.

If an organisation later needs to transfer records into a specialist collections database, GIS environment or archive, having clean and structured information provides a far better starting point than scattered notes, disconnected photographs and ad-hoc spreadsheets.

Easier field recording and good data structure do not have to be opposing ideas.

You can have both.

Start where the information is created

There is a natural tendency for software systems to begin with the requirements of the database.

• Gardens often work the other way around.
• The information begins outside.
• It begins beside the tree whose label has disappeared.
• With the new plant that has just been put into the ground.
• With the gardener who notices that something has changed.
• With a photograph taken during a survey.
• With an unfamiliar plant somebody wants to identify.
• Or with a location scribbled down as three words because that was the easiest way to record it at the time.

Sometimes there is time to open the record and update everything immediately.

Sometimes there isn't.

Taking a photograph may be enough to capture the moment and give you something reliable to return to later.

The more friction there is between noticing something and recording it, the greater the chance that useful information will be lost.

BotanicalMapper is designed to shorten that distance.

One record, several uses

A good garden record should not exist simply because a database requires one.

It should be useful.

The same information gathered during everyday work can help a gardener relocate a plant, help a curator review its identity, preserve photographs over time, support future surveys and help visitors discover the collection through a public map.

That changes the value of field recording.

The information is no longer being collected simply for an archive.

It becomes part of the working life of the garden.

A complementary approach

There does not have to be a choice between a lightweight garden tool and a sophisticated professional system.

They solve different problems.

Enterprise collection databases and GIS platforms are exceptionally capable when an organisation needs their depth.

BotanicalMapper offers another approach to the everyday layer of garden management: a map and plant-record system designed to be understandable, accessible and practical for the people actually working with the collection.

For some organisations, it can be the main system.

For others, it can complement existing infrastructure.

Either way, the principle is the same:

Make it easy to capture good information where that information is created - even if that sometimes means simply taking a photograph - and turn it into structured, useful records that can support the garden team, the collection and the public map.