FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Berkeley, CA, October 7, 2024 – Pacific Horticulture, a leading 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization focused on gardening in the West Coast region, today announced that it is suspending its experiment with a paywall-driven business model and has made all of its content available for free via its website www.pacifichorticulture.org.
The organization also announced the completion of the review of strategic alternatives that commenced in June. Board Chair Don Baldocchi explained, “The Board’s review, in consultation with Pacific Horticulture’s stakeholders, concluded that despite the challenging environment for content-driven organizations and small nonprofits like ours, we play a valued role in the gardening and horticulture community in our region and that there is a path to sustain our operations through a mix of member and philanthropic support, sponsorships, and revenue generated through our garden tour travel program (https://pacifichorticulture.org/tours/). We believe that taking down our paywall will make our content available to a much wider audience to both better serve our mission of spreading ideas about the vital role of gardens and landscapes, as well as reach a larger audience of potential supporters.”
Baldocchi added, “The strategic review also made clear the importance of Pacific Horticulture’s content library, and we will be seeking out potential institutional archival partners with the technical expertise, resources, and economies of scale to maximize the digital availability of our vast library of authoritative content created over the past 55-plus years.”
About Pacific Horticulture
Pacific Horticulture spreads ideas that grow our gardens and landscapes to achieve climate resilience, steward biodiversity, and connect people with nature and has an extensive archive containing over 1,600 digital articles from over 970 authors of historic importance in the horticultural field. The organized has digitized journal articles published between 1977 and 2019—a valuable digital collection from over forty of our fifty-five years of operation. These articles are supported by 12,000 photographs including works by professional garden photographers of significance. In recent years, Pacific Horticulture added new media to our holdings including audio files of 40 podcast episodes, as well as a collection of educational videos and recorded video presentations.
For additional information, please visit our website at www.pacifichorticulture.org.
For information on how to make a donation to Pacific Horticulture, please visit www.pacifichorticulture.org/new-donation-page
Contact Information
Don Baldocchi, Chairman of the Board of Directors Pacific Horticulture (415) 716-7206 don@pacificnurseries.com
