Public gardens play a crucial role in promoting horticultural education and appreciation. Proper plant signage can further enhance a visitor’s learning experience. This project provides partner gardens with trusted horticulture information while further utilizing Oklahoma Gardening content, produced by Oklahoma State University Extension. Oklahoma Gardening, a research-based, how-to gardening television show, airs weekly on Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA), a PBS affiliate. This project created a virtual, educational experience for visitors of participating gardens. Eleven public gardens and educational demonstration gardens located in rural and urban settings throughout Oklahoma were provided with 5-15 signs depending on the size of the garden, the availability of in-season plant material, and the applicable video content. This approach leverages the recent widespread adoption of QR codes, allowing visitors to access plant information effortlessly from Oklahoma Gardening. Many of the selected gardens provide free entrance to the public, offering a horticultural experience to all. However, this can reduce the garden’s operation budget and limit their ability to provide adequate educational signage. The objective of this project is to help these public gardens increase their horticulture educational interpretation. These QR code signs not only provide gardens with seasonally appropriate plant identification signage but also offer visitors videos about the plants they are observing. Furthermore, for open-access public gardens it can be difficult to quantify visitation. By utilizing dynamic QR codes the quantity and time of scans is captured. This allows for tracking of the usage of each sign and which plants are most popular. This information is then shared with participating gardens. Public gardens are often visited by tourists as well. This project expands Oklahoma Gardening and OSU Extension beyond television and YouTube to reach an audience in the public garden space. The dynamic QR code scans provide the phone’s registered city, state, and country, giving approximate geographic locations of garden visitors. After a year of placing the signs, we have identified clicks from 23 states, and 5 additional countries. This project was funded by Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Specialty Crop Block Grant.
