Who came to visit the Gardens?

Australians will recognise this man immediately as one of the presenters of the ABC TV gardening show - he came to visit our Gardens as part of a large LandCare celebration. He is lots of fun and very easy to get along with. We were a bit concerned to begin with that there were not a lot of people around, but they came by the time Jerry was to start talking, lots clutching their bits of plants for identification of the pests on them. Jerry talked for ages and was very patient with everyone trying to nail him for a talk on their special concerns.
He also planted a tree in an experimental part of the Gardens. We are hoping to encourage the planting of local trees in streetscaping, rather than importing all the same plants from down south so that every town and city you visit have the same streetscape - how boring is that! This tree, whose name escapes me, grows in local scrub in pretty tough conditions so the question is what will it do in the rich alluvial soil in the Botanic Gardens - hopefully it will only grow to about 14 metres and thus be suitable for planting in the streets. Then the next challenge will be persuading the nurseries to grow them so they are available to the landscape architects.

There were many other activities going on as you can see here. The local Society for Growiing Australian Plants sold out all the seedling trees they had brought with them.

There was a good crowd listening to a workshop on producing compost and the different types

needed for different soils - I should have sat and listened to that too I think, I don't know nearly enough.

My grandkids were there enjoying all the children's activities on offer - Hamish is having fun with hula hoops. There was bocce (we have a court at the Gardens for the large Maltese population here), weaving a cubby house - lots of fun, but hot out in the open!

I am tired, but we had a very successful day, lots of people who may not have been to the Gardens before came, hopefully they went home inspired to try some of the local species in their gardens.