With a $119,000 grant to upgrade its online database, the Bellevue Botanical Garden will be able to make it easier for people find the precise location of each of the garden’s thousands of plants.

Featuring cultivated theme gardens, natural wetlands, and a woodland trail, the Botanical Garden is one of the city’s most scenic and popular destinations. The “Museums for America” grant awarded by the national Institute of Museum and Library Services this month bolsters the garden’s educational mission.

The garden’s searchable plant collection database has been partially integrated with its electronic maps. When the two-year database upgrade is complete, 1,500 more plants in four large theme gardens will be easier to find and catalog.

The grant will fund a two-year intern staff position and also pay for a computerized label machine that will speed the process of tagging plants, currently done with a hand-dialed embosser.

The grant was awarded to the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society, which raises money and recruits an army of volunteers who help maintain the city facility. A required resource match will be achieved largely through in-kind contributions from two volunteers, Joanne White and Ruth Edwards.

The project will begin on Aug. 1, and will be completed by July 31, 2012.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded $19.5 million worth of grants to 178 organizations around the country, most of them museums, chosen from among 510 applicants.