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How to Upload your Plant Data

• To upload information about the plants growing in your garden, you first need to apply for a login. Use GardenSearch to locate your garden and then click the Edit Garden button at top right.
  

• Once you are logged in to your garden pages, you can paste or upload your plant list.
  

Why Add Your Plant Records?

• BGCI runs this unique global database on the plants kept in living collections in gardens everywhere in the world. Your data is used in our Plant Search available to everyone through our website.
  

• The Plant Search is of value to conservationists, researchers, policy makers and planners, educators and many more people who are all working around the globe to save plant diversity. One of the most important uses of the Plant Search is to measure how many threatened plants are safely in cultivation somewhere in the world.
  

• The database is also being used to measure progress under Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation

• A database is only as good as the data in it, so the more clean, recent data that we have in it, the more useful the results you get when you use the BGCI Plant Search.
  

• It's easy to do! Especially if you already have list of your living collections. You just copy and paste, or upload a CSV file.
  

• Your data is managed via your garden pages so anyone uploading data also has access to free space to share information about your garden with the botanic gardens and plant conservation community. Thousands of people use our site every week looking for information about gardens all around the world.

• The location of your plants is kept hidden from Plant Search users so you will not face any security issue regarding rare or valuable plants.

• As climate change affects more areas, this information will be increasingly valuable and we urgently need to get everyone's data into the system.
  

• BGCI is taking snapshots of the data too, so we can monitor how it is changing over time.

• Data contributors have access to more information than is available to ordinary site users. Your plant collection can be cross-referenced against the IUCN threatened plant lists, so you can see instantly how many plants in your collection are threatened.
  

• During 2006 BGCI is developing more powerful queries of the database and these will be made available to contributors. In the meantime please upload your data and help us make this as accurate as possible so we can all make the right conservation decisions and protect plant diversity.
  

How To Add Your Plant Records

There are three steps to sending your data to add to PlantSearch:

1. Register with us for a Garden Editor login
2. Login to your account online
3. Upload or copy-and-paste your plant list

First Get Your Garden Login

To get started, go to www.bgci.org/garden_search and use the search to locate your garden.

At the side of your garden's profile click the ‘Edit Garden’ button – and login.

If you haven't got a login please complete the garden editor application form to create an account. We will send you a username and password so you can begin.

Login and Edit your Pages

Once you have received your user name and password, you can update your garden's online information by following the instructions below:

• Return to your garden's profile in the garden search
  

• To the right of the page, locate and click on the "Edit This Garden" button:

• Enter the username and password you received in the email from us. (Your user name is most likely to be your email address)
  

• Review and update if necessary the 'Contact and Staff Details' including address details and web address, then click 'Save and Continue’.
  

• Use the left hand navigation bar to review and update the other categories such as ‘Research Programmes’ and ‘About this Garden’. You can come back as often as you like and fill it in bit by bit or update information.
  

• After you have made any updates click the ‘Save and Continue’ button at the bottom of the page. You can Preview how it will look to the public using the 'Preview Garden' link on the left hand menu.
  

• Images of your garden can be uploaded for display on your public profile page, simply click on ‘Photo Manager’ in the left hand menu and source the images from your own computer.
  

• After you have added the images, click the ‘update fields’ button at the bottom of the page.
  

Prepare Your Plant Records

While editing your garden data in the database, you can also upload, replace or append your garden’s plant holdings.

You need to create a CSV file with categories that match our database.

You then cut and paste the CSV (comma separated values) file into our system.

TIP: A Microsoft Excel file can be saved as a CSV file by selecting ‘CSV (comma delimited)’ as the option under ‘Save as Type’ in the ‘File - Save As’ menu.

Seven fields only are required (abbreviations of field names taken from ITF2 Standard Field Names (1998):

Genus Hybrid (genhyb)
Genus Name (gen)
Species Hybrid (sphyb)
Species Name (sp)
Infraspecific rank (isprk)
Infraspecific epithet (isp)
Cultivar name (cul)

As a CSV file, this would be written as: genhyb,gen,sphyb,sp,isprk,isp,cul

Any field can hold a blank value, which will be recorded as a comma (which indicates to the computer programme to move to the next field).

If you only have genus and species name, the record would be written as:

-,gen,-,sp,-,-,-

With the blanks (-) removed, the record would be ,gen,,sp,,,

So the plant list might look like:

,Abronia,,turbinata,,,
,Abronia,,villosa,,,
,Acacia,,asepala,,,
,Acacia,,blakelyi,,,
,Acacia,,bussei,,,
,Acacia,,carens,,,
,Acacia,,circummarginata,,,
,Acacia,,cuneifolia,,,
,Acacia,,filifolia,,,
,Acacia,,paolii,,,
,Acacia,,stereophylla,,,

Adding Your Plant Records

To add plant records, select ‘Plant upload’ from the menu on the left. You will see the options to view or download your data. If you don't have your list stored with us yet, you can now either paste it straight in to the box, or upload your CSV file to our site.

Updating Your Garden's Plant List

Your plant list is added to by simply pasting your data into the box. Check the 'Replace current plants list' if your new list includes all records for the garden. Otherwise, your additions will be treated as separate, new records.

Alternatively, you can download your current plant list as a CSV file and add new records to the CSV file.

To do this, click on ‘Download your current plant list as CSV’.

This will open your Plant list as a text file. This file should be named plantlist.csv and saved.

Now that the .csv file extension is there, the file can be opened as a spreadsheet in Excel showing the records in the correct column format. The columns called ‘2004_redlist’ and ‘1999_redlist’ should be deleted before new records are added to this list.

The updated list can then be added to the database by using the Upload method and checking ‘Replace current plant list’

Please contact BGCI for help if you have any queries about the BGCI Plants or Garden databases.