Communicating through landscapes in Australian Botanic Gardens

This article originally appeared in Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) Education’s ROOTS magazine Volume 11 • Number 2 • October 2014 themed ‘Beyond the beauty of art in botanic gardens.’

Australian landscaping and garden design have come a long way since the time of early colonial settlement. Here is an overview of some of the ways contemporary museums and botanic gardens are using creative design in the modern Australian landscape to communicate powerful messages about science and the environment.

Janelle Hatherly 2021

‘My Country’, our wide brown land

Australia is renowned for its expansive arid interior, unique biodiversity and spectacular natural beauty. Yet 200 years of intense human colonisation has taken its toll on fragile ecosystems and now more than ever these natural environments need our protection and conservation. 

Literature, music and the visual arts are creative expressions of human spirituality, values and emotions. Collectively referred to as the arts, they are influenced by culture.

The appeal of Australia’s natural environment, and the emotional tug it has on those born here is captured in the quintessential bush poetry of the Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968). ‘True blue Aussies’ can recite the second verse of her poem, My Country, from memory.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

Written in 1908, Mackellar’s feelings were not yet represented in Australian horticulture or botanic gardens. At that time, the focus was on adapting exotics to this ‘inhospitable unfamiliar landscape’. Landscape design is another human construction and is an art form in itself.

A brief history of Australian landscape design

Early colonial settlers brought their domestic and agricultural practices with them to Australia, clearing and cultivating the land in familiar ways. Mimicking what was popular overseas, residential areas, botanic gardens and public parks were developed in the Gardenesque style.

Exotic plants were arranging picturesquely, symmetrically or in geometrical beds, and all surrounding native vegetation was removed. Even fragile plants survived transportation to Australia in Wardian cases and, once here, were propagated in glasshouses. Botanic gardens played an important role in their acclimatisation.

This traditional landscaping style remained popular until about fifty years ago and it is still evident all around Australia. Fine examples can be found in mature sections of botanic gardens in Australia’s first capital cities.

The deliberate use of Australian plants in design only came into existence with the foundation of our national capital, Canberra, a mere one hundred years ago. The landscape architect Walter Burley Griffin incorporated the natural landform and native plants into his design for the city. Yet he received and accommodated plenty of advice to use exotics – which still dominate Canberra’s older suburbs.

The late 1960s and ‘70s saw the development of an Australian landscape architectural profession and the widespread use of native plants in urban design. This had an enormous impact on how residential suburbs were subsequently created, as well as botanic gardens.

Officially opened in 1970, the Australian National Botanic Garden in Canberra was the first to study and promote Australia's flora. Other native botanic gardens soon followed. Despite their presence, growing Australian plant assemblages remained challenging because of the overall lack of knowledge of their horticultural requirements. They also suffered from a common perception that, being native, you could just throw them in and they would thrive.  This was not the case.

The ecological botanic garden evolved in the 1980s and ‘90s, and whole natural ecosystems were added to botanic estates. Alice Springs Desert Park is a fine example of an in-situ environmental education facility which interprets the predominantly desert habitat. The displays work with the natural landscape recreating what could be there if the impact of colonisation was minimised.

Contemporary botanic garden design in Australia embraces principles of sustainability with modern buildings and gardens responsive to environmental conditions, site and context.

The botanic garden as a living museum

Sweeping societal changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology mark the beginning of the Information Age. This has had a significant impact on the role of cultural institutions. They are no longer merely collecting institutions with displays open to the public. Now learning and social action have taken centre stage. With population growth and our increasingly urbanised existence, issues related to Australia’s natural environment are becoming all the more important.

Given these trends, botanic gardens are becoming more aligned with museums and art galleries than with national parks. In new botanic garden developments, planners are adding the wow factor and creative installations which can be interpreted as ‘Art in the Landscape’.

One of the best examples of this is found at the Australian Garden at The Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne. Its popularity and ability to communicate Australia’s Red Centre has resulted in other botanic gardens creating museum-like exhibitions about Australia’s dominant desert ecosystems.

Aesthetic landscape design and botanical displays are also becoming a creative feature of art galleries and museums. An outstanding example is the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Canberra where evocative sculptural installations and a mist spray create emotional connections with the ‘quintessential Aussie bushland’. 

The most extreme expression of this style, to date, is seen at the Garden of Australian Dreams at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. The landscaped concrete courtyard makes strong statements about Australian self-consciousness and landscape design. Visitors either love it or hate it ... but all are definitely affected by it. As with any good exhibit, it provokes thought.

By combining the arts with horticulture, botanic gardens can manifest complex environmental concepts and issues and stimulate meaningful connections with plants and nature.

The National Arboretum in Canberra, opened in 2013, is a fine example of contemporary thinking in Australian botanic gardens. By reaching out to visitors through something that is familiar to them, it is becoming very popular with Australians. Nostalgia wells up as locals relate to the sculpture on the hill: WIDE BROWN LAND, spelling out the description of Australia by McKellar, and based on her handwriting.

The landscape and building design create works of art and the planting of seedlings and young trees has a great future-focus and respects the time required to establish ecosystems.

The mass plantings of single species, arranged into 100 forests and 100 gardens, enable stronger connections to be made with threatened, rare, and symbolic trees from around the world, for example, the historic plantations of Cork Oak (Quercus suber) forests.

Finally, art comes into its own when we attempt to communicate basic scientific concepts. By combining visual elements with performance and the written word, the gap between the lay visitor and the expert botanist/horticulturist is bridged.

Language, as a particular example, is a powerful human construct and over the years, as an educator, I have found the creative use of words and symbols as artistic installations within thematic displays greatly facilitates public learning.

At the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, SEX+DEATH, spelt out in Nandina domestica plants, introduced the temporary exhibition of the same name, at the Tropical Centre in 2005. The exhibition discussed the concept that, just like humans, plants (in this case, orchids and carnivorous plants) are capable of seduction, cooperation, death and deception.

Image: Google Earth

In 2012, Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary was interpreted in one of the evolutionary beds with a sculptural installation comprising six mirrored letters, each two metres high, spelling out DARWIN’s name. Key words (Evolution, Extinction, Variation, Inheritance, Adaptability, Selection and Divergence) and quotations by Darwin and other great minds including Trust scientists appeared to ‘just hang there’ – like moments of inspiration or clarity of thought – offering insights and provoking responses. The image below is of the launch of the Darwin Installation.

Linking landscape design to education

Cultural institutions need to distinguish themselves from each other and competing recreational attractions whilst they focus on fulfilling their respective missions. For botanic gardens, this is to inspire the appreciation and conservation of plants and the natural environment, each within its local context and cultural sense of place.

But how effectively are botanic gardens communicating their mission and values to the general public? Are garden displays thematically planned and achieving their intended impact? Visitor feedback invariably includes appreciation of the peace and tranquillity and satisfaction with services, but botanic gardens need to provide visitors with more than pretty flowers and green wallpaper.

Most visitors are novices and their conceptual framework is different from that of botanists and horticulturists. They lack specialised knowledge, language and ways of thinking and looking which experts/local knowledge holders acquire through learning and practice. It is the role of educators to help bridge this gap between novice and expert and art in landscapes can be an effective communication tool. It brings the familiar to the unfamiliar and facilitates thinking and learning.

©  Janelle Hatherly

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