7 minute read
Community engagement at Auckland Botanic Gardens
Community engagement at Auckland Botanic Gardens
Paul Swift, Education and Partnership Specialist, Auckland Botanic Gardens and Chair, BGEN
I have the pleasure of being the Education and Partnership Specialist at Auckland Botanic Gardens and the Chair of the Botanic Gardens Engagement Network (BGEN). This combination enables me to concentrate a large part of my professional career on community engagement. I thought that I would share a few of the recent community engagement activities that have been held at Auckland Botanic Gardens to illustrate that you can achieve a range of engaging events with relatively limited resources.
I acknowledge that not all gardens are fortunate enough to have a dedicated team who can focus on community engagement but that doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve some great visitor engagement opportunities using resources that you will undoubtedly have at your disposal. As many of you will appreciate, botanic gardens have multiple audiences – from the time-pressured international tourist, the excited family group, right through to the local resident who wanders through daily. Their needs and expectations vary so one size doesn’t fit all.
Partnerships can be an amazing way to achieve community engagement events while not consuming a huge amount of time and resources. When I first joined Auckland Council the Chief Operating Office had a phrase, ‘Start with yes and then make it happen’. This has stuck with me and is something that I generally try to do. Often you just need to be open to sharing your venue or subject expertise. Pay attention to what is happening outside in your local community and see how you can get involved. For example, we have an active group of community gardens spread out across Auckland where volunteers help to grow food for families in need and enjoy all the associated health and wellbeing benefits of gardening. These groups often operate in isolation so one of the simple things that we have initiated this year is to connect with these smaller groups and offer our large and well-equipped venue as a place to meet and exchange ideas. We are thrilled to be hosting their end-of-year get together later in the year where they can mingle, exchange ideas and see our new wheelchair-accessible raised garden beds. It is a simple but effective way for us to engage with and support this valuable community work.
When I first joined Auckland Council the Chief Operating Office had a phrase, ‘Start with yes and then make it happen’.
In April, libraries across Auckland ran an Eco-Warrior-themed school holiday program. The libraries approached the gardens and asked if we could support this. It was such a simple and relevant thing to do so we agreed to run a Bugs in the Botanic Gardens event in the Potter Children’s Garden, where we explored the worm farms and searched for invertebrates in the leaf-litter and soil. The libraries were able to promote this event at over 50 branches in Auckland, so we had a very successful event simply by being open to this partnership opportunity.
In March we hosted a large regional sustainability event for schools called Eye on Nature where we welcomed hundreds of school children and a wide range of partnering environmental organisations to the gardens.
The children participated in a series of educational activities relating to the sustainability topic of ‘waste’. The gardens team delivered sessions in the Potter Children’s Garden that explored growing your own food and a sustainable water session that showcased the water-sensitive design features that are found in the gardens. These events are a great way to raise awareness of the gardens and to promote us as a destination to return to again and again with family and friends. As an extension to the Eye on Nature school event we also hosted a month-long Eco-Fest where external organisations ran a range of community events such as composting workshops, an environmentalthemed movie at a pop-up outdoor cinema and a large ‘junk play’ session for children. We have a large lawn area in front of our Visitor Centre, which is an ideal venue for events of this size. I believe that you must be receptive to stepping outside a narrow definition of whether an activity fits within a botanic garden realm. You need to be prepared to slowly grow your audience and introduce them to the awe and wonder of the botanical world. With the junk play session, I talked to the organisers about how it would be great to introduce some natural, plant-based resources to the activity as well as the usual plastic junk materials, as this would then align more strongly with our core role of connecting people with plants.
Obviously, children and families are just two of the groups that we need to engage with. In March and April, we ran some more adult-orientated Drop and Learn sessions in both the Gondwana Arboretum and the Herb Garden. These are free, hour-long drop-in sessions that provide visitors with the opportunity to meet the relevant garden curator and learn a little more about the garden and collections. We vary the topics with some specific gardening-related tasks, such as pruning or tool sharpening, through to more general-interest seasonal guided walks. We are steadily building these events and are starting to see some regular return visitors attending, which demonstrates the appetite that many people have for engaging with our specialist gardens and gardeners. The best thing about these events is that we all have amazing gardeners who only have to give up an hour of their day to share their passion and knowledge − and the public just love the opportunity to talk with the gardeners first-hand.
We are steadily building these events and are starting to see some regular return visitors attending.
Some of your communities will be ‘internal’. We are incredibly fortunate to have a very well established and active Friends group here in Auckland and they generously support staff development and conference attendance. It makes sense, of course, that we look to support and engage with this important group. We recently took 26 Friends around the Native Plant Ideas and Manuka Gardens, and the relevant garden curators shared their plans and passion with an eager and receptive audience.
During the Easter School holidays we ran a series of family-friendly activities ranging from loose parts nature play to fungi exploration with the Mushroom Smith, a local mycologist and educator. By creating engaging and educational fun experiences for our younger visitors we help them appreciate the amazing world around them. We also help them create positive ‘memory making’ experiences here in the gardens so that they will hopefully continue to visit, enjoy the gardens, and become lifelong supporters of our work. Some of these events, such as the loose parts play, are simple to resource. I asked the garden staff to collect any interesting leaves, foliage and seeds from around the site and then we simply made these available for children to engage with. They built imaginary animals with pinecones and twigs, created mandala patterns with petals and leaves and generally just slowed down and explored the beauty of these botanical building blocks. Again, a cheap and easy way to offer a family-friendly activity without having to bring in expensive resources and expert staff.
If you are interested in community engagement and education within the botanic garden sector, and BGEN, please get in touch by emailing me at paul.swift@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz.
