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In 2016 some significant anniversaries will be celebrated of both national and international importance.
Four hundred years ago Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog landed on the West Australian coast and it was also the year that perhaps the greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare, died.
Of great significance in the gardening world, 300 years ago Lancelot 'Capability' Brown was born. Described as England's greatest gardener, Brown worked on an immense scale diverting rivers, creating lakes, constructing hills, planting forests - all with the aim of crafting a contrived natural beauty.
So picturesque and familiar, today many people assume that the ‘natural’ rolling hills and meandering rivers Brown created have existed since time immemorial.
He was nicknamed ‘Capability’, because he would tell his landed clients that their estates had great ‘capability’ for landscape improvement. Brown died a few years before the First Fleet landed in Australia but the impact and influence his work had, not only in the UK but also across the world, is immense.
Within 20 years of the First Fleet’s landing in Australia, what we now know as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, was founded and 2016 marks its bicentenary.
Not unlike Brown’s monumental undertakings, the early work of molding the landscape and transforming the natural virgin coastal bush on the Sydney Harbour foreshor, into a civilized European garden, albeit with scientific aims, was realized.
Lachlan Macquarie became Governor of NSW in 1810 and had a vision for an English parkland setting surrounding a grand house. The house was constructed some years later and is known to us today as the magnificent Government House.
Under Governor Macquarie’s guidance, work on the site progressed and a stone seat was laid in the name of his wife, becoming known as Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and the completed road system became known as Mrs Macquarie’s Road.
The road was opened on June 13, 1816 and this day is officially observed as the Foundation Day for the Botanic Gardens. Over the ensuing 200 years, the gardens have had a colourful and rich history, full of interesting characters and memorable events, not to mention the thousands of fascinating plants that inhabit the space today.
Two great directors, Charles Moore and Joseph Maiden, presided over the gardens for a combined 76 years, implementing much of the original infrastructure and attractions that we know today.
Charles Darwin visited the gardens in 1836, some years before the publication of his seminal work ‘On the Origin of Species’.
In 1879 the immense and glorious Garden Palace was built to house Sydney’s International Exhibition. It was the first building in Australia specifically built with electrical wiring throughout so it could be used 24 hours a day. Only three years later it was destroyed by fire and unfortunately many valuable records and artifacts were also destroyed in the flames.
In the 1960s, marijuana was cultivated in the Gardens nursery, under the watchful eye of police, to assist in training officers how to better recognise the illegal plants.
Forensic botanists at the Botanic Gardens were also instrumental in solving some of Sydney's most notorious and sinister crimes.
The 1960 kidnapping and murder of eight-year-old Graeme Thorne is perhaps the most remarkable case. The boy’s body was found wrapped in a tartan rug, which was sent to the garden’s forensic team and plant fragments were identified as two types of conifer, by comparing specimens in the garden’s herbarium. Fragments of pink mortar were also found on the body.
This information enabled police to narrow their search, eventually identifying a pink house in the Sydney suburb of Clontarf, with the two conifers in the front garden. A search of the property led police to Stephen Bradley who later confessed and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the boy’s murder.
The Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney continue to evolve and grow and with over three and a half million visitors each year continues to be a much loved and admired Australian landmark.
As gardeners we all have that desire to transform, control and create our own little patch of paradise. Maybe not on the scale of Brown or with the plant diversity of the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens but whether it be a balcony, a quarter acre block or a rural expanse, we all strive to achieve the best results, to be our own ‘greatest gardener’.
A worthy goal and something you can all celebrate and aspire to.
Happy Gardening!