The Dunsmuir Botanical Gardens received a grant from The McConnell Fund of the Shasta Regional Community Foundation on November 25, 2009. Grant monies will be used to install permanent plant identification signs throughout the Gardens, metal-etched interpretive signs in four areas of the Gardens and attach permanent metal-etched accession record tags to each of the Garden's perennial woody plants.
In addition, the grant will enable the purchase of a laptop computer and software to create an accession database for the Gardens’ permanent plant collection.
Another project will be the partial funding of a professionally designed and installed crevice rock garden featuring alpine plants native to our local mountain ranges.
Candace Miller, Gardens Oversight Chair, is a currently working to indentify the genus, species and variety of all perennial woody plants in the Gardens. As plants are identified and provenance information is gathered an accession record is made for each plant. A numbered tag corresponding to the accession record number will be permanently affixed to the north side of each woody plant currently in the Gardens and to each new woody plant that the Gardens receive. This information will be entered into the accession database. The information fields for each accession record will follow the US National Arboretum accession record format. This database is the heart of a botanical garden and is crucial to planning horticultural education outreach and for sharing information with researchers, students and other botanical gardens. Metal interpretive signs for the Native Plant Area, Butterfly/Hummingbird Garden, Crevice Rock Garden and River Overlook will enhance the horticultural education for visitors to the Gardens.
At the north end of the meadow, a crevice rock garden is planned. The 20ft by 24ft garden will showcase alpine evergreens and perennials native to the mountains surrounding Dunsmuir which will create year-round and seasonal displays. The plants will be obtained from alpine nurseries in Oregon that propagate the plants from seeds collected in the Klamath, Siskiyou and Cascade mountain ranges. The garden will be constructed of stone native to the area. Smaller rocks would be added to large foundation boulders to create crevices which will then be planted with alpine plants. The rock garden will be built to form a small “mountain” with walking trails where visitors can view the plants. Following completion, the Dunsmuir Botanical Gardens’ Crevice Rock Garden will be the only public rock garden available to visitors between Sacramento, California and Portland, Oregon. Project work will begin in the late winter or early spring as soon as snow conditions will allow. It is hoped to have the work completed by May 1, 2011.
