On Tuesday the 7th of February, The Willow Glen
Gardeners headed across the border into Canberra for a field trip to The
Australian National Botanic Gardens. The overcast day brought a welcome
reprieve from the recent heatwave and made for perfect conditions to stroll
around some of the unique 35 hectare gardens.
Everyone gathered in the visitor’s centre to collect maps while
they patiently waited for the late comers to finally arrive (sorry guys,
traffic was terrible.) Of course the first and most important thing on the
agenda was finding a place to have morning tea! The onsite café “Floresco in
The Gardens” did not disappoint offering a variety of yummy meals, cakes and
very good coffee. They even had tables large enough to fit the entire gang!
The Botanic Garden Showcases a wide variety of native plants
(over 6000 species) from all over Australia and offers guided tours as well as
a variety of self-guided walking trails. There are themed garden zones such as
the “Red Centre Garden” “Rainforest” and “Sydney Region Flora”. The gardens are
open 7 days and entry is free but there is a cost of $3.20 per hour for parking.
We had our usual meeting over lattes and slices discussing our
gardens. Weeds are of course a ‘forever’ issue, we discovered the group has an
abundance of apples and Warren shared a great tip about putting paper bags over
bunches of grapes to help them ripen more evenly, just be sure to cut the
bottom corner to allow for drainage.
We headed off for our walk and couldn’t help but admire the large
and beautifully made sculpture of a ‘Thorny Devil’ lizard residing in the ‘Red
Centre Garden’; he made for a great photo opportunity sitting there surrounded
by red sand and desert plant life with Black Mountain and the tower a stunning contrasting
backdrop.
An abundance of real wildlife also makes the gardens their
home. We took turns spotting and photographing the well camouflaged water
dragons that congregated around the rock garden waterfall. Eastern Spine Bills
drank nectar from tiny flowering orchids, Fairy Wrens darted amongst the banksias
and even a random ginger coloured rabbit was spotted hopping about the Eucalypt
lawn.
We stopped for a quick chat to a member of their hard working
staff who was in the process of mowing the vast eucalypt lawn - with a push
style Lawn mower. She assured us that they did in fact usually use a ride on
but it was out for repairs and she was just glad that it wasn’t 40C that day!
Slowly we made our way back out to the car park through the
beautiful winding stone paths and boardwalks of the Rainforest Gully, the
towering tree ferns above us creating a cool, leafy contrast to some of the dry
harsh landscapes you find in other parts of the garden.
We said our goodbyes and I drove away that day feeling very peaceful,
Australia really is a very beautiful country with such amazing and diverse native
flora; I am lucky to live here!
