Alan Meerow mentioned >The National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) of USDA-Ag Research Service, for >whom I work, is trying to forge a cooperative integration with AABGA member >gardens by which participating garden collections would be essentially be >accessible through the NPGS. ...Our Germplasm Repository in Pullman, WA >maintains an allium collection. Alan, do you think the curator of the alliums would like to receive offerings (from documented wild seed) from PBS members such as Mark McDonough and myself, who grow a lot of them? If so, whom should we contact? As for systematic beds, there is a fairly systematic Penstemon collection at the Leach Botanical Garden in Portland, Oregon, and I seem to recall systematic beds at the botanic garden of Mt. Holyoke College in ?Massachusetts. Surely there are many more such installations in botanic gardens around North America. The Rhododendron Species Foundation garden near Seattle has rhododendrons, of course, but I think they also have collections of other ericaceous genera such as Gaultheria. And of course there are great arboreta in many parts of the continent, such as the Hoyt Arboretum near where I live, which has many systematic tree collections, especially of conifers and magnolias. Diane Whitehead mentioned the Oregon Garden in Silverton. You can forget the idea of systematic collections there -- it was conceived as a showplace for the nursery industry, and they are moving farther and farther from what many of us dreamed it could be, i.e. Wisley West. Large collections of bulbs are perhaps better maintained by individuals than by botanic gardens, since in the latter a premium (with funding implications) is usually set on permanent display, and there's always the danger of theft of real rarities. Of course, there are BGs with great bulb collections, notably Kew in England and Gothenburg (Goteborg) in Sweden. I think you really need one or two truly committed individuals to keep a bulb collection going, as witness what happened at the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. Also, it's sometimes necessary to control predators by means not acceptable to BG advisory committees; when I asked why there were so few bulbs at the UC Santa Cruz BG, I was told that rabbits had eaten them and that it was considered unethical to trap and kill the rabbits. No such scruples around my place! Just a few thoughts. Jane McGary Northwestern Oregon, USA