[PCA] NEWS: How Our Botanic Garden Grows (Santa Barbara Botanic Garden)

[Olivia Kwong]

http://www.independent.com/news/2009/jul/28/how-our-botanic-garden-grows/

How Our Botanic Garden Grows
Current Leadership Yearns for Facilities, But Many Aren.t Pleased
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
By Matt Kettmann

Deep inside the herbarium at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Dieter 
Wilken is holding a specimen of Santa Cruz Island ironwood that's glued to 
a piece of archive paper. He's surrounded by rows of gray shelving units, 
home to the more than 150,000 similarly collected specimens that make the 
Garden one of the most important plant resources on the West Coast. But as 
Wilken carefully puts the ironwood away, his gaze shoots to the top of the 
cases, where countless stacks of specimens sit without a home, no longer 
able to fit on the jam-packed shelves. "The critical thing is that we have 
many specimens we can.t put in here," said Wilken, vice president of 
programs and collections at the Garden, which was founded as a showcase 
for native California plants in 1926. "We've essentially run out of room."

See the link above for the full article text.