All landscape designers need to develop a comprehensive knowledge of plants. We have already studied six plants in detail, added, collected lots of information about those six, and added them to an online database, but a landscape designer needs a much larger palette. Knowledge about plants builds slowly over time and it is a good idea to be organised about the manner in which you store plant data right from the beginning of your Diploma study. Here we first discuss simple plant database systems and then move to more complex ones.
Assignment
Using your Google Docs word processors, write a paragraph about your experiences using plant databases.
Various plant data systems
Card index
We start by saying that you do not need computer databases to store information about plants. Your database can be as simple as a collection of cards with each card containing information about a particular species. To help in identification, you might possibly mount photos of the plants on the card. A simple card index system is all that required although there are sophisticated card index system with punched holes that can be used in( combination with a needle) to filter the pack for species with particular characteristics - see below.
Simple computer spreadsheet
Many landscapers store their plant information in a single computer workbook containing one or more spreadsheets. Microsoft Excel is the most common spreadsheet in use. The figure below shows part of a worksheet being used to hold data about plant species. this sheet has been made somewhat more complex than it really needs to be as the hyperlink option has been used to put a link to a photograph of the plant in one of the cells. The intention of the owner of this sheet is to link every species to at least one photograph. Photographs for all species are not yet available.
Note the powerful sorting capability of Excel. It is possible to filter the listt to show just Tall Trees or simply Small Shrubs (or both).
Relational databases
Using a relational database enables much more sophisticated manipulation of plant lists. many relational database programs are available - MySQL, Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, Oracle etc.
Microsoft Access
Many of you will find that Microsoft Access is loaded onto your computer. This is a relational database and can be used to build quite sophisticated methods to hold information about plant that you are interested in. The figure below shows one such database developed using Microsoft Access.
FileMaker Pro
This tool is used by Burnley Horticulture in their plant database system.
We have developed a plant database of our own using this tool. Here is a screen grab from our FileMaker plant selection system that we have developed. In the figure below, we are about to add the habit photograph of the species in question (abelia grandiflora). This uploading of an image file is done by a simple right-click and selecting insert object.
Online databases
Here is a link to the University of Melbourne's comprehensive catalog of online resources for landscape students.
Searching through a database such as this to find a plant with a specific set of characteristics (small shrub with yellow flowers in autumn which is frost tolerant is easy to do).
Online databases
We have begun the development of our own online database which provides sophisticated selection and the ability to download images. The images we upload are designed to be used in GardenCAD drawings. The exercises you will complete in gathering accurate information about half a dozen species will help us populate this database.
Here is the link to our online plant database. Once you have registered on the site, you can use the lighbox faciity to tag several images and download them to your desktop. We would hope to add your work to it soon.
Local Government database
The most comprehensive database at our disposal is one developed by the Adelaide Botanic gardens in concert with the South Australia Local Government association.
Google images
Google images [http://images.google.com.au] is also a useful resource. For example, the national floral emblem of Taiwan is Prunus mume. If you were researching that species and visit the Google images site and type in that name, you will be presented with lots of pictures of the Plum Blossom tree, including the fact that it is popular for Bonsai.
