Fact Sheet
The University of Washington Botanic Gardens (UWBG) is part of the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences in the College of the Environment.
- UWBG was established in 2005 to unite the gardens and programs of the Washington Park Arboretum and the Center for Urban Horticulture and is located around the shoreline of Union Bay on Lake Washington.
- UWBG Living Plant Collections contain 10,478 specimens representing 4,451 distinct taxa. Of these, 1,236 accessions are of known wild origin.
- The 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum, one of the most important tree collections in North America, is jointly managed by UWBG (plant collections) and the City of Seattle’s Department of Parks and Recreation (park functions), with support from the Arboretum Foundation. All parts of the Washington Park Arboretum, with the exception of the Japanese Garden, are open to the public free of charge.
- The 16-acre Center for Urban Horticulture site serves as the meeting place for over 200 organizations, including 60 horticultural groups. The Center’s Merrill Hall is the first sustainable building to be built on the UW Seattle campus. It houses the UWBG’s administrative offices and research labs, the Miller Library, and the Hyde Herbarium. It also provides a classroom, offices, and plant clinic space to the WSU King County Extension Program and the Master Gardener Foundation of King County. Located throughout the gardens at the Center are over 150 woody plant species and cultivated varieties and nearly 500 herbaceous perennials and cultivars. In the container nursery undergoing plant production are 189 accessions, 76 of which are from wild-collected sources.
- The Center for Urban Horticulture also includes the 74-acre Union Bay Natural Area (UBNA). With four miles of shoreline, it serves as an outdoor laboratory for UW research and as a publicly accessible wildlife habitat. More than 200 bird species have been sighted in UBNA.
- The Elisabeth C. Miller Library is the most important horticultural library in the Pacific Northwest. It houses 15,500 books, 500 journal and periodical titles, 1000 nursery catalogs, and video and electronic resources. It offers a range of free services to the gardening public as well as to the academic community and holds an annual, Garden Lovers’ Book Sale in early April.
- The Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium houses 20,000 specimens from the Washington Park Arboretum and elsewhere and is one of the nation’s largest collection of preserved, cultivated plants. It serves as the official herbarium for the Washington State Noxious Weed Board and also provides free plant identification help to the public.
Number of People who visit UWBG Annually (Admission is free): 320,000 (250,000 to the Arboretum; 70,000 to the Center), 98% are from Washington State.
Elisabeth C. Miller Library
- Annual number of visitors: 18,500
- Annual number of books checked out: 3,500; used in library: 17,700
- Annual website pageviews 206,014
- Annual number of reference questions researched and answered: 5,100 (includes Plant Answer Line)
- Library Children Programs, Classes, Exhibit Openings, and Tours (2010): 171 events/groups, 1,917 participants
Outreach
- Subscribers to E-Flora, the monthly newsletter and other social media: 4,130
- Volunteers: In 2010, 265 volunteers plus 15 volunteer groups contributed 12,902 hours
- Alliances and Partner Organizations: 96
- Rental Events held at UWBG: 1,676
- Annual website pageviews: 524,914
UWBG Educational Programs
- Youth Saplings School Programs: 211 programs; 5,394 participants
- Youth Explorer Pack Program: 46 pack rentals; 968 participants
- Youth Summer Day Camp:3 sessions; 108 participants
- Adult Public Programs: 14 programs; 296 participants
- Adult Professional Programs: 6 programs; 417 participants
- Adult Washington Park Arboretum Tours: 55 tours; 1,081 participants
- Adult Center for Urban Horticulture Tours: 6 tours; 88 participants
Undergraduate Participation
- Restoration Ecology Network: 400 students and 9 community partners
- School of Forest Resources classes at UWBG: 12
- Regional Community College horticulture programs: 3
UWBG Research Programs
- The Rare Care and Conservation Program partners with 25 federal and state land holding agencies to monitor 750 rare plant populations. In 2003, the Miller Seed Vault was built at UWBG. It is the only state-of-the-art climate controlled storage and lab facility for seeds of Washington’s rare plants and currently stores seeds of 80 rare Washington species and has received 4800 accessions (seed lots).
- Biology of invasive species, including assessment of invasive potential of introduced plants and impacts of current invaders
- Propagation of rare species for reintroduction into the wild
- Biology of rare plants
- Restoration ecology research (collaboratively with the Restoration Ecology Network), using the Union Bay Natural Area as its outdoor laboratory. UW-REN involves undergraduate students in research through a restoration capstone course that, since its inception, has completed 50 collaborative restorations in western Washington.
- Plant responses to climate change and other ecophysiological studies of plants
- Graduate Students (2009): 40
Other affiliated research
- Human dimensions of urban forestry and urban greening
- Human response to land use change along the urban to wildland gradient, and the relationship between forest lands and the built environment
- Forest soil microbiology (especially decomposition, nutrient cycling processes, and mycorrhizae) and forest pathology (especially root and canker diseases)
- Host selection behavior of bark beetles; aquatic entomology; and tropical forest insects
- Tissue to whole tree responses to environmental stresses, particularly in water and nutrient relations, carbon economy, and growth of trees from diverse ecosystems
3501 NE 41st Street · Box 354115 · Seattle, Washington 98195-4115 · Tel: 206-543-8616 · www.uwbotanicgardens.org
Last modified:
Monday, 05-Mar-2012 09:57:09 PST