The Atlanta Botanical Garden, Inc.

The Atlanta Botanical Garden, Inc. Conservation And Research Division, doing business as Atlanta Botanical Garden, operates as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization and acts as a federal grant recipient in plant conservation, rare species recovery, workforce development, and botanical research. The organization does not hold federal contracts; all federal engagement occurs through grants and cooperative agreements from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Science Foundation.

Atlanta Botanical Garden's federal grant portfolio centers on plant conservation and biodiversity protection across the southeastern United States, with secondary focus on workforce training and collections management. The organization coordinates the Southeastern Plant Conservation Alliance, which spans botanical gardens, state wildlife agencies, and conservation organizations across 15 southeastern states and has expanded to include partners in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and tribal nations. Recent prime-grant work includes a $844,483 National Leadership Grants award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS, CFDA 45.312) effective September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2029, to scale a plant conservation coordination model nationally through gap analysis, species conservation assessment workshops, and a permitting resource guide for smaller and mid-sized botanical gardens. Concurrent with that, the organization holds three IMLS Museums for America grants (CFDA 45.301) totaling approximately $1.5 million—including a $504,280 award for a region-specific conservation workforce training program in climate-vulnerable southeastern areas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands covering conservation horticulture, seed banking, in vitro propagation, and fieldwork; and a $522,993 award for "Propagating Our Future," a conservation outreach initiative targeting public engagement and high school education on rare southeastern plants.

The Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 4 represents the largest customer by award count, with 23 awards primarily structured as cooperative agreements supporting on-the-ground recovery actions for threatened and imperiled plant species. Representative cooperative-agreement work includes a $100,000 Endangered Species Recovery Implementation award (CFDA 15.657) from the Fish and Wildlife Service Asheville Ecological Services Field Office, effective January 2, 2024, through December 31, 2027, supporting population censuses, threat assessments, propagation protocols, and seed banking for Roan Mountain bluet and white irisette in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains; and ongoing recovery initiatives for Miccosukee gooseberry, Apalachicola wild indigo, and eared coneflower on private and public lands across Florida and South Carolina. The Atlanta Botanical Garden also participates in a National Science Foundation-funded postbaccalaureate mentorship program, the Rare Plant RAMP Network (RAMP: Understanding Plant Species Rarity), awarded October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2026, in consortium with California Botanic Garden, The Morton Arboretum, and San Diego Botanic Garden to train mentees from underrepresented groups in conservation genetics, ecology, and rare-plant biology. Additionally, the organization received a Division of Biological Infrastructure award effective April 1, 2022, through March 31, 2025, to digitize and provide public access to its living plant collections—more than 106,000 individual plants from 12,096 taxa, including the nation's most diverse living orchid collection with 2,328 taxa.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service together account for 88% of recent awards by count. Activity has declined from seven awards in 2022 to one in 2024, with a partial recovery to three awards in 2025 and one in 2026. Three grants face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, creating recompete exposure in workforce development and collections-access initiatives. The organization also acts as a sub-recipient on a single federal grant—a cultivating-native-seed-supply-chain and coastal-wetland-restoration project funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation on behalf of Eglin Air Force Base—awarded June 23, 2025. The Atlanta Botanical Garden's federal engagement is concentrated in endangered-species recovery implementation, plant conservation capacity building, and botanical research infrastructure, with geographic focus on southeastern states and U.S. territories, and operates exclusively as a grant recipient rather than through contract vehicles or partnerships with federal contractors.