GARDEN JOURNAL

Botanic + Biennale

The 17th Sydney Biennale was on when I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens. As part of the show the Garden played host to a couple of artworks on the theme of threatened and threatening nature.

Choi Jeong Hwa from Seoul presented ‘The unbearable lightness of being’. This floating lotus blossom made me smile and reminded me of Tim Watkin’s kinetic sculptures.

Too bad the fountain was on – it’s competing for attention. But colour choice for the flower is brilliant.

The following shots are of Sydney-born artist Fiona Hall’s installation ‘The Barbarians at the Gate’. She painted beehives with military camouflage patterns associated with different countries and then sited the hives at the Gardens as foreign objects “analogous to the shipping in of people during early colonial times”. The camouflage worked really well. The installation was subtle and sited really well close to one of the Garden gates.

Each hive also had a special roof to reference the country it represents. The result is meant to illustrate ‘a colonial-era nation building process of introducing people, plants and animals into foreign habitats forever changing the ecology of a place’. The site is also marked by a low sandbag edging, totally in keeping with the idea of defending against an invader. I’m glad I had a chance to see the pieces – they helped make the massive scale of the Gardens more human and friendly.

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Roses in Sydney Too This Week

My habit of traveling off season to visit gardens is intact.

The Sydney Royal Botanic Garden is at rest right now but still amazing on quick glance – spring buds are starting, and the scale and scope of the plantings and trees is impressive. It’s cold here, but that’s certainly a relative term.

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Blooming This Week

The roses at Lougheed House are blooming this week. I miss growing roses – I used to have a large hardy shrub rose garden. All of the roses were prolific bloomers and frankly, quite easy to grow if you paid attention.

The Lougheed House garden has a small collection of shrub roses in its borders. The top image below is a Morden Blush bud, my favourite Canadian-bred rose developed in Morden, Manitoba. Foliage on all of the roses looks really good, which is amazing considering our lousy summer weather. When the weather is consistently cool, like we have had, powdery mildew is a typical problem for roses especially if they are top-watered or watered late in the day. But the gardener at Lougheed obviously knows this and is dong all of the right things. Full points.

Add I applaud any gardener in Calgary who believes that a rose arbour that you can actually walk under is possible to fill in a single gardening season here. And enough faith to think that the established roses on the arbour will winter-over and be more magnificent the next year. This is a great start.

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Friggin Flying Fox

In 2007 one of the largest trees in the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens Palm Grove died. The tree, a Pacific Kauri, (Agathis moorei) was collected in New Caledonia in 1853 by Charles Moore, the Gardens’ Director at the time. The demise of the tree is attributed to the roosting habit of a grey-headed Flying Fox colony.

The flying fox colony, over 20,000 critters strong, has also been responsible for the devastation of another 18 significant trees in the Gardens and damage to an additional 300 trees and palms. The bats have literally set up ‘camp’ in the Gardens and are causing damage x3.

1. The large number of bats, particularly when roosting and breeding, break branches and strip trees of leaves and new shoots.
2. The loss of shade when the upper canopy dies (from roosting bats) damages or kills trees and plants underneath that are not suited to full sunlight.
3. Large amounts of guano kills the living tips of palms and other plants in the lower storeys.

Attempts to move and deal with the bats has been controversial as these flying foxes are listed as a vulnerable species. They play an important role as pollinators in the Australian ecosystem. But Australia’s population of grey headed flying fox has declined by 30 per cent in the past decade because its food source – these are nectar and fruit eating bats – is being threatened – the coastal forests which they rely on for blossoms are being cleared. So, it’s a battle, with all sides struggling to do the right thing – nature at odds with human intervention.

But back to the dead tree.

The Kauri Project was developed in response to the downing of the dead Pacific Kauri. Similar to the 2001 Onetree project in the UK, the Kauri Project  commemorates the tree by distributing its wood to local craftspeople who will  produce and exhibit the results of their wood crafts. All items will be for sale with proceeds used to replant and conserve the Palm Grove and its Kauri trees.

I like Richard Raffan’s turned bowls the best – simply beautiful. The wood crafts are on display at the Gardens starting today, August 21 through to August 29. You can get information on sales from the Botanic Gardens Trust office or by email.

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In Your Eyes

Smoky day on the balcony. BC is on fire.

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When the Growing Gets Tough

The tough get growing.

Directly opposite the Sydney Opera House is a huge (30-40 feet high) retaining wall holding back a cliff at the edge of the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. And over the years, plants have established themselves on the wall. Some are simple to imagine how the plants may have appeared – maybe a bird, insect or the wind dropped seeds into the cracks and crevices.

Some plants have not only sprouted, but have scrambled up the face of the wall and securely planted themselves into its rough surface.

Some might be new sprouts from the deep, exposed tree roots from the botanic garden.

But look at the trunk at the base of this foliage – what is going on here?

And obviously these visitors aren’t gardeners.

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Bamboo With a View

Mike and Doug are keeping busy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you have time to slip up to the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden for a cocktail, you’ll get a nice surprise.

I love the Starn brothers other installations as well, particularly the Arts for Transit work at the South Ferry Station, 1 line, New York City Transit.

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The Far Side of the World

Monday disappeared over the Pacific. But on Tuesday first things first. The Sydney Opera House. Smaller than I assumed based on the millions of pics of this icon. But textured, patterned and more beautiful than I could imagine.

It’s located right next to the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens.

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Thanks J

Thanks J, for garden-sitting and making sure the harvest continues.

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Balcony Gardener

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