Last month, Blue Raster showcased its flourishing Public Garden practice at the American Public Gardens Associations Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the largest gathering in the conference's history, and the entire week was full of excitement, knowledge, and opportunities to connect with colleagues, both old and new.

Blue Raster split time between our booth in the expo and the presentations, where many of our partners spoke. At the booth, we shared our deep experience and passion for designing and developing custom interactive web and mobile mapping applications that highlight public garden collections, tours, and visitor amenities. Our partners, including The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Holden Forests & Gardens, and Cypress Lawn Arboretum presented on our collaboration using GIS and mapping to enhance not only the visitor experience but also internal workflows that allow for more efficient and dynamic plant records keeping. The entire conference was capped off with an evening at Mount Auburn Cemetery, with whom we collaborate on their Flora public web application.

Blue Raster has been supporting public gardens and cemeteries for 15 years and has been an APGA member since 2018. Having attended five in-person annual conferences, Christopher Gabris, Blue Raster’s Public Gardens Practice Lead, had this to say: “The prevalence of GIS and maps is growing at this conference every year. Blue Raster is proud to partner with gardens to develop well-designed and intuitive staff workflows and powerful web and mobile mapping applications for the public. Every garden is unique, and our dedicated team can bring your data and special story to life.”

Blue Raster is an Esri Gold Business Partner and offers something very special to gardens – the ability to design a tool for visitors that is as unique as the garden we work with. “We are not trying to put all our partners applications into a template that looks like everyone else’s or has restrictions on functionality. We will work with you to design and develop and application that meets the needs of your data, workflows, and your users,” says Gabris. “Our applications are designed to work on mobile devices, be styled to fit your gardens wider brand, and sync data between GIS and your database system of record.”

Learn more about how Blue Raster uses GIS to enhance public, staff, and research workflows at our partner gardens and reach out to see how we could help you: https://www.blueraster.com/what-we-do/modernize-public-gardens/