Or, can you think of another way to get about 2000 - 3000 plants in the database (without violating copyright)?

1. Hiring students part-time through an internship program. Is there a university / program that you would recommend?
   
2. Purchasing the information from an existing source (Horticopia, AHS). Frankly, I don't think they would do it.
   
3. Wikipedia. This would work for pictures, but not for zone, exposure and other measurable characteristics.
   
4. Outsource it to India. I'd rather have someone with a background (or interest) in horticulture be involved with this.
   
5. USDA plant database. "Been there, done that." So far, I've imported about 1300 "commercially available" plants from the USDA plant database. However, it seems like these plants are geared towards agriculture, not gardening. Not very helpful. It would be good to use this as a secondary source of information after a plant has been added, though.
   

• scientific name
  
• common name(s)
  
• type (perennial, annual, vine, etc)
  
• zone (min and max)
  
• water use (min and max)
  
• exposure (min and max)
  
• height
  
• width
  
• text description (general, cultivation, uses, problems)
  

This database is part of a new gardening website that will allow users to share garden plans (pictures + plant lists) online. In addition, it will be a place where landscaping professionals can keep their portfolios up-to-date and in the public view...free of charge. Those with the best/most contributions will receive more exposure and this could mean more business for those in the landscaping industry.

If any of this interests you please respond to this post, or send me an email at "scottbbrady [at] gmail [dot] com".

Thanks

Sunset Western Garden Book: "More than 8,000 Plants"

The Plant Locator - Western Region: "More than 50,000 Plants"

5th Edition Andersen Horticultural Library Source List: "over 70,000 plants"

If you had at least as many as the Sunset book it would still amount to mostly common kinds. 2-3 thousand is such a small sampling the utility of the file comes into question, users finding over and over that a plant is not in there will become frustrated. There are individual nurseries that offer more kinds of plants than that.

If you do this, for one that small I would think you'd be talking about plants native to a particular State or something. The way to make it useful would be to offer a search where you could search for plants that do well in dry shade, wet shade, full sun in sandy soil, full sun with clay soil, and maybe be able to add in a color pallet or bloom time.