Boothbay's botanical garden wants to collect samples of every native Maine plant 

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The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay has big goals for its plants. 

The gardens are now looking to build several new facilities that would total 42,000 square feet and eventually include a collection of all native Maine plant life. 

Since opening in 2007, the gardens have drawn growing numbers of visitors to the midcoast — now more than 200,000 per year — with 300 acres of plants and grounds, as well as popular holiday light displays. But after that immense growth, the organization is now looking to focus more on its research capabilities. 

The expansion, which still requires local approval, would include a 10,770-square-foot administrative and laboratory building, a head house, two greenhouses, a storage building, three hoop houses and several outdoor planting areas. The project would likely cost between $20 million and $25 million, with private grants helping to fund it. Construction could begin as soon as this spring.

Gretchen Ostherr, president and CEO of the gardens, said the expansion would help to pursue the gardens’ larger goal of inspiring connections between people and nature. 

“A part of that design is really about teaching people about plants and about plant conservation, and just really trying to inspire a love of plants, especially in young people, but really kids of all ages,” Ostherr said. 

While the organization currently does field research on plants, it does not have any labs where its scientists can work. Introducing a lab would allow the gardens to take more student researchers, use molecular biology and bring more educational value for visitors, according to Ostherr. 

It would also allow the organization to begin storing more plants in a variety of ways. That would include a collection of seeds from native Maine plants that have been dried and frozen — or “cryo-preserved.” The researchers would also be able to expand their herbarium — which stores plants that have been pressed onto paper — from 20,000 to 100,000 specimens. Ostherr said DNA can be extracted from these specimens. 

Ostherr said the goal is to prevent any Maine plants from going extinct. The herbarium would initially gather specimens of all native plants in the state. Eventually, the organization hopes to gather specimens for all of them in northern New England.

“At the end of the day, we’re all reliant on the plants for life,” Ostherr said. “You know that we will at least have the DNA material, either in seeds or in the herbarium or in cryo-preservation, so that if something happens to a plant, we would have the ability to still study it and potentially even restore it.”

The new facilities would be located behind the back parking lot of the gardens and wouldn’t be open to the public, Ostherr said. However, guests would be updated on the ongoing research by educational signs and classes. 

Ostherr noted that the new facilities would be carbon neutral, using solar panels and electric heat pumps, as well as cisterns to collect and reuse rainwater.