Pollinating great ideas World Poetry Day at the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens Roana O’Neill, Co-ordinator Communication & Engagement, Bundaberg Regional Council
Roana O’Neill
I recently ran a poetry competition in the Bundaberg Botanic Gardens in support of World Poetry Day (WPD) on 21 March 2021. We invited the community to send in their poems and we celebrated WPD for the whole of March. We received a small number of lovely thoughtful poems. We also received poems from three staff which was great. Rod, who lives in a nearby retirement village, wrote two poems (The Botanical Gardens and The Gardens). Nicola penned Bundaberg Botanic Gardens. She is a mum of four who always used to walk through the gardens while waiting for the kids to finish hockey practice (the hockey fields are right next door to the gardens) and now she’s getting back into teaching. Pippa is only seven years old and wrote Botanic Gardens Botanic Gardens. It’s a funny story as her mum, when I spoke to her, had no idea she had entered! We found out that she saw the competition last time she visited the gardens with her grandparents. Pippa had been learning about rhythm and melody at school from her music teacher who had been showing them how to achieve this in three lines, hence the three lines in the poem. Technically it’s actually meant to be sung! The poems by staff are by Monica (Six Mount Perry Road) and Darien/Di (We Fell in Love with a Rainbow Tree). Di runs the nursery in the gardens and Darien is her trainee. Monica works in administration in the office based in the gardens. You’ll find these poems scattered throughout the magazine. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.
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Pippa receiving her prize from Cody Johnson, Area Supervisor, Botanic Gardens & Horticulture, Bundaberg Regional Council. THE BOTANIC GARDENer | ISS 56 WINTER 2021
