Pocket-sized brochures for visitor convenience* Clare Fraser, Adult Education, Dunedin Botanic Garden Traditional brochures aren’t necessarily designed for outdoor use. Visitors to botanic gardens contend with wind and rain. They also need to keep their hands free to drive wheelchairs and pushchairs, manage children or just hold sunhats in place. Dunedin Botanic Garden’s new fold‑up brochures allow visitors to carry unused brochures in their pockets, then pull them out again, fully intact. It all started when we redesigned our main map brochure. Most of the botanic garden is on the slopes of a hill so the question of accessibility came to mind. For people in wheelchairs and pushchairs we can’t change the terrain or even do very much to change tracks. However, some spots are innately more accessible than others so we decided we can provide information to help visitors know which they are. Wheelchair users were contracted to travel every track and calculate a rating of either easy, medium or hard. It turned out that some spots on the top of the hill or even its more gentle slopes are fully accessible to all. This was a pleasant surprise for a wheelchair user at the brochure launch who said she’d thought that since her accident she’d never be able to visit the upper garden again. Consulting people who use their hands for transport prompted the idea that a fold-up, pocket-sized brochure would be extremely useful. And, as is often the case with accessible infrastructure, it also offered practical convenience for all visitors. So we were off. Visitors had been showing interest in the garden’s specimen trees so a pocket-sized Tree Trail was developed around 50 or so trees. Next, a staff member met a friendly geologist in a pub and the idea for the Volcano Trail was born, following existing tracks up the side of an ancient volcano. The geologist, from GNS Science, provided expert technical advice and was a natural educator, open to seeing the facts interpreted into a user-friendly form. The trail is a real hit, with 3000 brochures moving in the first six months. 28
The new suite of pocket-sized outdoor-friendly brochures developed for Dunedin Botanic Garden.
THE BOTANIC GARDENer | ISS 53 SUMMER 2019/20
