FEATURE GARDEN
Then and now: celebrating 20 years of the Mackay Regional Botanic Gardens Lisa Kermode, Curator Botanic Areas, Mackay Regional Council
Mackay Regional Botanic Gardens celebrated its 20th anniversary in May 2023. Reaching this milestone was a great opportunity to reflect on how the gardens has developed and changed since it was officially opened. As part of the birthday celebrations, we were fortunate to host the designer of the gardens, landscape architect Lawrence Smith. While he was here, we took every opportunity to hear firsthand about Lawrie’s vision for the site and his design intent. Lawrie was very generous with his time, leading guided walks for the public, staff and councillors, giving presentations and workshops and being a special guest at many of the birthday events. Learning about the significance and reasons behind key design elements, and the practicalities and challenges of bringing them to life, was a fascinating and enlightening experience. Plans are under way to share Lawrie’s stories with a wider audience through a digital sound trail experience across the gardens. Mackay Regional Botanic Gardens was established to showcase the plants of the Central Queensland Coast Bioregion, a diverse area featuring lush tropical rainforests, wide sweeping beaches, mangrove-lined waterways and open eucalypt forests. Looking back at photos of the individual gardens as they were being constructed and planted and comparing them to what we see today highlights the fact that a garden is constantly changing and never static. Plant collections develop and mature, plants grow and age and are impacted by changing weather conditions such as cyclones and floods. Plants self-seed, spread themselves around and search for light as shade increases. Some plants grow and thrive, while others struggle and need to be replaced. Views across a landscape change as plants grow and mature, hard infrastructure such as garden bed edging becomes softened by plants and weathering, and the microclimatic conditions change as plants mature. An example of this is the Malta Garden, established in consultation with the local Maltese community. Significantly, Mackay is home to the largest population of Maltese people in an Australian regional centre and this garden recognises their historic and continuing involvement with the sugar industry and their contribution to the development of Mackay. Features of this garden include a stylised aqueduct colonnade, bocce court, open lawn area, a kitchen garden and culturally important plantings. A relatively sunny site when first established, it has become progressively more shaded over time as surrounding collections, including a large fig
14
THE BOTANIC GARDENer | ISS 61 Summer 2023
