Informing Smith College Botanic Garden’s Seed Collecting Policy

Seed collection is a practice riddled with ethical and legal hurdles. Botanic garden seed collection, whether for display, research, or conservation, is tied to a long history of colonialism and exploitation, which botanic gardens continue to grapple with today. The Smith College Botanic Garden has called on us to help inform their seed collection practices, so they may write up a seed collection policy by Spring 2025, their next collection season. We used a combination of literature review, a survey, interviews, and mapping to explore the history of botanic gardens and seed collecting, gauge various perspectives around seed collecting, identify legal conventions to follow, and visualize the Smith College Botanic Garden’s history of seed collection locations. We found that botanic gardens have an intrinsic history of perpetuating colonialism, thus so does seed collecting. There are no universal standards for seed collection practices, ranging from acquiring permission to collect beforehand to regulations on how many seeds to collect, how frequently to collect, protocols for collecting rare/threatened/endangered plants, and how to consider Indigenous territories and knowledge. We concluded that it is best practice to follow legal conventions such as acquiring a permit or license and having specific protocols for collecting rare versus common species. The relevant literature also highly endorsed documenting seed collections in a comprehensive database. Overall, we recommend that the Smith College Botanic Garden create a mission statement that will guide its collections policy to respect legal conventions and make efforts to include Indigenous perspectives.