Presenting for the American Public Gardens Association’s 2025 Technology & Innovation Professionals (TIPS) Virtual Symposium

Getting Started with Drones & GIS in Your Botanic Garden (30 minutes)

• Presenters: Robert Graham, Anna Petrie

• New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill staff presents how GIS technology is being utilized in the organization; from utilizing historical imagery, taking high resolution drone images, and mapping the living and non-living collections. Other topics include the types of tools for mapping the garden’s collections (living collections and dedicated features), current GIS projects, and future goals for how GIS can create accessibility to the collections along with sharing information and knowledge with other institutions for conservation research.

Spoke alongside other environmental professionals to the graduating class of Worcester State Universities Earth, Environment and Physics students regarding the environmental field, career direction and generally about my experience in the environmental field as a Worcester State University Alumni

Full day presentation for NDAL

What’s Hiding in the Landscape? Uncovering a Site’s True Potential

Steve Conaway & Robert Graham (indoor lecture)

In this presentation Steve and Robert will discuss the essential work of site assessment in uncovering the plant community traits, ecological processes, and past human activities that inform New England’s widely varied landscapes. Through historic land use records, observations on the ground, and regional resources they will show how to effectively reveal the potential diversity and ecological character of a site. With insights from the past and analysis of the present, designers can more successfully enhance botanical diversity while curating inspirational spaces that elicit a true “sense of place.”

and

Field Walk (outdoor walk)
Robert Graham and Larry Weaner

We will visit multiple meadows with varying compositions and histories, including a native meadow that was planted in 2021; an older meadow dominated by pasture grasses and many of the broadleaf forbes that commonly associate with them; and a wet meadow containing a large population of native forbs and shrubs, managed by period mowing. Finally, we’ll visit an invasive plant-dominated vernal pool and discuss aggressive vs. gradual approaches to a native plant transition.