I am a Registered RMT in Ontario making a career change to Professional Landscape Design/Gardener. Gardening is my true passion and I am extremely interested and facinated by the similarities between human and plant biology. I don't have any intentions of going back to school any time soon (SAH MOM of 2 young boys) but was hoping that their is opportunity for someone like myself to get involved in plant research. Is there any plant research studies out there that are available to non-students/professors? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
One interesting project in our area (Florida) is a municipality's effort to use GPS systems and a geographic information system to map all the trees in their parks. This sort of mapping is often needed in conservation areas as well. If anyone's doing some experimental management in such an area, they might well need help with before-after inventories.
Here are a few efforts you might contribute to: Pollination Canada (a monitoring study of pollinators and flowers) Seeds of Diversity (growing heritage and heirloom varieties of plants to maintain genetic diversity) Plant Watch (a monitoring study re: recording of flowering times, creating a broad country-wide dataset that helps identify ecological change) Another possibility is helping with plant breeding programs to trial new cultivars of plants in your area. That usually requires knowing someone who knows someone first, though, to get your foot in the door - or approaching plant breeding programs directly.
What would be really nice is some way round wretched annoyances like these . . . is there any chance that the UBC could help with research by e.g. providing password access to online botanical journals?
Yes, wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately, I don't think any institution in the world does something like that!
Trouble is, it is stifling research - there's no way I can afford the charges they make for the papers, so it means they don't get read.
I don't disagree. You'd think that authors of papers, at least, would want their papers as widely read as possible.
I'm sure that many do - I know some (e.g. R P Adams of www.juniperus.org ) put all their papers on their own websites. It is the money-grabbing publishers who are making things difficult.
Daniel, I really like the Seeds of Diversity link, looks like a very worthy organization ... I particularly like the garlic project (my wife will be happy as she likes any excuse to have some garlic). Thanks for sharing the link, I've said it before but you truly amaze me with the amount of information and general contribution you make to this site.
