Care For The Rare @ Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton
The Care For The Rare (CFTR) garden at the Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton (ABGS) has been one of my favourite projects I've worked on to date. In a nutshell, this garden is part of a much bigger project, spanning Australia and New Zealand. The goal of the Care For the Rare project is to get rare and threatened plants into collections in botanic gardens across the two countries. See page 39-45 of this PDF on the BGANZ website for more info.
Rare plant Viola betonicifolia subsp. novaguineensis (species of native violet) @ CFTR ABGS, October 2020. Photo by Melissa Stagg
Botanically it has been fascinating, but the team that I’ve been working with are the icing on the cake. The FABGS (Friends of Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton) team, the BGANZ (Botanic Gardens Australia & New Zealand) team, and the RBGV (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria) Horticulture team have been such a pleasure to work with. A whole lot of good people have come together to pull-off such an important project. It's an honour for our Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton to be the custodians of such a precious collection of plants. So here is a little bit about what has gone into the project from a design perspective.
“All the plants in the design are indigenous to our region; celebrating the amazing diversity and beauty of our unique flora”.
My design rationale for the CFTR garden @ ABGS was to basically celebrate the native plants of our own region here in Shepparton. All the plants in the design are indigenous to our region; celebrating the amazing diversity and beauty of our unique flora. I love ABGS, and all the amazing plants from all around Australia that can be found there; but I felt like the plants of our very own region weren't really featured, and needed a bit of a spotlight. Especially the rare and threatened ones. We have so many amazing plants that are at risk of disappearing all together, yet hardly anyone knows about it. As well as being a landscape architect, I also work with the Euroa Arboretum and the Goulburn Broken Indigenous Seedbank (a.k.a GBIS), where we are on the front line of fighting the extinction of these amazing plants. This is why I wanted to offer my help by designing the CFTR garden. These plants are something I'm so passionate about, and there wouldn't be another landscape architect out there who has as intimate knowledge and understanding of the plants from across our region, so it felt like I was meant to help.
I never stop being amazed by the beauty and resilience of our region's flora, and never stop learning about it. I've been like a pig in mud working on the project. I'm loving every minute working on it. It has been such a pleasure working with the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Horticulture team. I met with them at Cranbourne Gardens last year, where we worked through the list of potential candidates (species), and refined it down to the final few that we thought would be most successful in the harsh conditions of ABGS.
Once I finished the design, I gave the team my plant numbers, and they've been working on growing them for us ever since. We're so lucky! I feel such a great responsibility to be designing with them. Now, I must say here, these aren’t plants that have been tried and tested in a garden context, so it will be a waiting game to see how they go. Some might die, some might thrive, but either way, we’ll learn more about them. The ones that survive will go on to be a ‘living seed bank’; a kind of back up plan for if they do go extinct in the wild.
Rare plant, Podolepis linearifolia (Basalt Podolepis) @ CFTR ABGS, October 2020. Photo by Melissa Stagg
In total there are 22 species of rare and threatened plants planned for the garden. Not all have arrived yet, as we haven't been able to get all the seed (or other plant material) needed to produce some species. I continue to be in touch with RBGV horticulture team on this, and I'm hoping to collect some of the seed we need, during the coming seed collecting season. I'll be out collecting for the GBIS anyway, so hopefully I find some of what we need for the CFTR project.
“Every plant in the garden is a plant you could see if you set out from Shepparton on a day trip and went for a bush walk”.
There are 55 different species planned for the garden overall, including the 22 rare and threatened species, and 33 other non-threatened species. Despite the straight lines of the existing beds, the design style has been worked in a loose, flowing, wild kind of manner. I did this because all the plants in the design can be found growing out in the wild in our very own region. Every plant in the garden is a plant you could see if you set out from Shepparton on a day trip and went for a bush walk. Some are found in woodland areas, some in grasslands, some in floodplains, some in rocky outcrops in the hills, but all are hardy and beautiful. The range of species I chose, support a wide range of native birds, animals and insects, and offer something interesting and beautiful at every time of the year. It will be a garden that is different every day of the year.
We are absolutely spoiled for choice with our indigenous plants, and I hope this garden inspires more people in our region to plant indigenous plants at home. There are indigenous nurseries scattered across our region, where anyone can buy indigenous plants, so there's no reason not to do it!
“I'm totally smitten by Viola betonicifolia subsp. novaguineensis. It's a gorgeous little rare native violet that occurs in forests along the Murray”.
We planted our first batch of rare and threatened plants on Tuesday, and now I'm totally smitten by Viola betonicifolia subsp. novaguineensis. It's a gorgeous little rare native violet that occurs in forests along the Murray. I use another pretty, indigenous violet, Viola hederacea (Ivy-leaved Violet) in a lot of my designs, as it's in cultivation and readily available. But this rare violet is just another level of pretty. The flowers are bigger, and just have a beautiful vibrant colour to them. Another stunner we planted is Podolepis linearifolia (Basalt Podolepis). It grows on heavy clay soils in grasslands, and has huge, beautiful yellow flowers, that it sends up high on stems to 60cm tall, for everyone to see. I know people have trouble finding things that will happily grow in the heavy clay soils of their home gardens in Shepparton, but mother nature has been doing it since the beginning of time! There are countless indigenous plants that have evolved to grow in our heavy clay soils, and all our local conditions. It seems like a no-brainer to use them in our gardens. So if you're in Shepparton, why not drop by and see some of the beauty our region has to offer.
Article by Melissa Stagg - Principal Landscape Architect