The Botany Building is home to an historic ‘library of plants’ – a herbarium – of immense cultural, historical, and scientific value. The herbarium contains over 400,000 dried, pressed and identified plants that have been preserved within large leather-bound books dating back to the age of global exploration.

The Trinity College Dublin herbarium is the only herbarium in Ireland to contain significant international holdings and is one of the largest university herbariums anywhere in the world.

The collection of plant specimens and literature had outgrown its historic footprint and required a modern facility with museum quality cabinets to keep the specimens safe from fire, flooding and pests.

The collection needed to be digitised and rehoused in mobile compactor storage units to maximise storage space and provide specimen security. Some building spaces needed to be modified and reorganised to provide sufficient research space for microscopes and the handling of specimens.

Works began with a structural assessment of the existing Herbarium floor. The floor needed to be strengthened to take the load of a modern rolling storage system. The system itself then needed to be designed and installed.

Other works included removal of the existing storage units, refabrication and repurpose of those units and minor alterations to electrical infrastructure. The old shelving units and workbenches in the Herbarium spaces were replaced and new additional work surfaces added. Works also included automation of lighting along with painting and decorating to walls, ceilings and floors.

The execution of the works took 6 months and came in under budget.