The Green Geek: Get Organised with Plant Databases

Q:

Dear Green Geek,

Thanks for your last article on folders. I am an organised rose grower and have all of my plant photos sorted into folders as you suggested. However, I need to find a way to store information about all of my stock – from the botanical name to watering instructions for my staff. Is there an easy way to organise all this information? Please help with this thorny problem.

Yours sincerely, 

Rose 

A:

Dear Rose,

It sounds like you want to set up a database of your stock.  A database is a collection of similar information – in this case, plants that you have in your nursery.  Databases are very useful because they allow you to store information in an organised way, let you access that information quickly, and can often be linked to other programs to provide extra benefits. For example, you can use the database to create a catalogue or even web site of your plants! This improves the quality of your work, while reducing work and retyping.

One of the most common approaches for creating a plant database is to use a spreadsheet, like Microsoft Excel.  While not technically a database, a spreadsheet is very easy to use (certainly a lot easier than products such as Microsoft Access) and most people have a spreadsheet program installed on their computer already.  Unfortunately, spreadsheets to not have the ability to store plant images. However, if you have your images neatly stored in named folders (as recommended in our previous article), this is not a crippling limitation. 

Let’s walk through building a simple spreadsheet database of nursery plants. You need to start by being very clear what information you wish to record for each and every plant. The following list is a good start:

• Genus 

• Category

• Botanical Name

• Common Name

• Description

• Nursery Location

• Soil

• Aspect

• Watering Requirements

• Pot Size

• Barcode Number

Each of these bits of information is known by geeks as a ‘field’ or ‘column’ and each and every type of plant in our database will have information stored for each of these columns. Of course, you will need to come up with your own columns for your own needs. For example if you do not use barcodes, then you would not need to worry about the barcode number. If you are a tube stock grower, the pot size may not be needed.

Once you have determined what information you will be using, you can start up your spreadsheet program – I’m using Microsoft Excel 2007 here, but most spreadsheet programs work in a very similar way.  With a new and empty spreadsheet open, type in the name of each bit of information you wish to store in each column along the first row of your spreadsheet.  

You may notice that I have replaced spaces with the underscore (_) character.  This is not a requirement of the spreadsheet program. However, if you plan to use this spreadsheet as a database with other programs (for example, with a labelling system or as an export to web site) spaces in column names can sometimes cause problems.

Now that you have all of your column names in place, you can start recording information about your plants. Each new plant is stored on its own row, directly under the column headings.  For example...

Unfortunately, while this plant information is correct, is a bit difficult to read because the spreadsheets column widths are a bit too narrow. To overcome this problem, you should do two things. 

First, adjust the column widths to best suite your needs. In Excel, you can do this by moving your mouse pointer up to the column header row (that’s the one with the ABCD... on it) and move your mouse pointer to the fine vertical line between two columns.  Notice how your mouse pointer changes its shape into a double-headed arrow?  Now left click and hold, then drag your mouse to alter the size of the column.  Easy huh?  

Next, you can word wrap the data in some of the columns. Word wrap will make the spreadsheet display multiple lines of text for very long bits of data, like the description.  You can word wrap data in Excel by clicking on the header of the column you wish to word wrap (in this case, you could put your mouse over the letter E in column header) and press the right mouse button to bring up a small menu, then select Format Cells.  In the window that opens up, put a check in the word wrap box, as shown below.

Once you have made those visual adjustments, you can continue adding more plant details to your spreadsheet database. Our small demonstration database now looks like this:

 Once you have your spreadsheet database set up, you can use it for all sorts of things. Printing a catalogue of stock is an obvious choice. You could also pretty up the spreadsheet by changing fonts and colours, and then hand out printed copies to walk-in customers so they can quickly find the plants they are looking for. You could also use it with a labelling program to print your own tags and bed signs. You should know that I develop such labelling solutions for TyTags, and so have a little bit of bias on this issue! 

If you do want to print labels, you may find that storing your plant information in a spreadsheet is a bit limiting because you cannot store a plant photo with the textual information.  In fact, this is not just a challenge with spreadsheets... even the more specialised database applications like Microsoft Access do not allow you to store plant photos easily! This is important, as the plant photo is often a critical visual guide for both staff and customers when looking for plants.  

To help overcome this little problem, a while ago I created a simple (and very basic) freeware plant database for a friend with hundreds of different hybrid orchids and related images. I called this little plant database application PlantMan, which is short for Plant Manager.  While not as flexible as the make-it-all-yourself approach when using spreadsheets, it does allow easy storage of plant text and images.  If you want to download a copy, please visit www.tytags.com.  PlantMan is compatible with Microsoft Access, so if you are serious about databases that include your plant photos, then it’s a good starting point.  And yes, by freeware, I mean it’s free. 

In summary, organising your plant information is best done using some sort of database. The most flexible and common approach is to use a spreadsheet. However, as you begin to use your plant database in new ways, you will find that plant images become a consideration. At this point, begin looking for more specialised database tools that supports both text and images. 

It’s well worth the effort to create your own plant database, as in the long-run, you’ll save a lot of  time and become better organised.