Research guides: HORT: Horticulture: Recommended websites

Canadian Websites

Invasive Species Council (of British Columbia)
Canadian Nursery Landscape Association
A great site with industry statistics, plant health, standards, and more. Some content is limited to members i.e. plant i.d.
BC Landscape & Nursery Association

Plant Information

PlantFacts Search Engine
Horticulture and crop science from Ohio State University
Landscape Plants: Images, Identification & Information
From Oregon State University
Native Plant Society of British Columbia
Washington Native Plant Society
International Plant Name Index
A collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and The Australian National Herbarium.

Plant Images

Plant database - Kwantlen Polytechnic University
From the School of Horticulture - includes an image database
CalPhotos - from the University of Berkeley
This database contains over 100,000 plant images that you can search by scientific or common name.
Image Gallery - USDA Plants
Includes photos and line drawings of U.S. plants but also contains many cultivated or foreign taxa.
E-Flora BC
An online atlas of the plants of BC. Includes a photo gallery, plant ID, invasive species, etc.
Great Plant Picks
Great Plant Picks is one of the educational outreach programs for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle. The focus is on recommending plants for the Pacific Northwest zone.

Pesticide Information

Pesticides and pesticide management
From Health Canada.
Pesticides in agriculture
From the BC Ministry of Agriculture.

Weeds & Plant Control

Biological Control: a guide to natural enemies in North America
From Cornell University
Pacific Northwest insect management handbook
From Oregon State University
IPM Images
Images of pests, biological control, invasive species, etc.

Creating a herbaria

Techniques & procedures for collecting, preserving, processing and storing botanical specimens
From the Government of BC
Field techniques used by the Missouri Botanical Garden

Suggested gardening apps

There are many apps available and you may already have some favourites. What is listed here are a few that are FREE and received good reviews.

And remember that Google Images allows you to upload photos for identification or drag & drop an image in to retrieve similar images in your results.

GARDEN COMPASS

Garden Compass (gardencompass.com). Simply submit a photo of the specimen and an advisory board of expert green thumbs will play “plant detective" until they’ve made a positive ID, a process that, in most cases, takes less than 24 hours.

GROWIT!

A social gardening app that allows you to share your plant photos, see what other members in your area are planting and also get plant information.

ID WEEDS

A free app offered by the University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences allows hand-held device users to identify hundreds of different weeds using a variety of search characteristics.

General sites of interest

The Organic Center
Credible site with peer reviewed information. Covers organic farming, foods, and products.
UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab
Includes information about gardening for bees.
The LuEsther T. Mertz digital library
From the NY Botanical Garden. Includes historical seed catalogs, historical garden photos, and more.