6 minute read
Camperdown then and now
Janet O’Hehir, Secretary, Camperdown Botanic Gardens and Arboretum Trust Inc
People often ask me why our botanic gardens and arboretum is so far from the centre of town. I tell them to look around. The botanic garden sits at the highest point of the 25-hectare site, between the two crater lakes of Bullen-Merri and Gnotuk. To the north and west you can look out across the western Victorian volcanic plain with its scoria cones and shallow saline lakes.
In country Victoria in the 1800s a local council would look around for a site where they could set up a public garden. In Camperdown, it was the other way around; the place so impressed Government Surveyor Robert Scott that he recommended it be preserved as a park for the benefit of the public. In fact, he stayed and built his own home down the road.
The conversion of this special place into something the British and particularly Scottish settlers would recognise as a public park began in the 1870s. Daniel Bunce, the curator at Geelong’s Botanic Gardens, did the initial layout. William Guilfoyle, director of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens provided advice from the 1880s through to 1910 when he prepared a detailed plan with a list of dozens of trees. With 113 years of hindsight we might not agree with his choice of ‘hardy shrubs such as Coprosmas, Laurustinus, Privet, Hawthorns and English, Spanish and white brooms’, or the Pampas and Arundo to be planted ‘every 50 feet or so’ around the garden fence. We have substituted some different plants, which we hope will capture his intent.
Between 1881 and 1962, three curators (Henry and David Fuller, and Abe Waddell) brought their gardening skills, and the scone-making skills of their wives, and no doubt the water-carrying skills of their children over summer, to create a garden that became a special place for the townspeople, even if they had to trudge a couple of miles uphill to get there. In the summer of 1922, the Camperdown Chronicle reported that ‘the main floral enclosure is gorgeous with many and varied beautiful blooms at present and all round is a great credit to the caretaker (Mr D. Fuller). Numbers of the prettiest plants and shrubs are in full bloom, and the park could not look nicer’. But over several decades, like most of Victoria’s regional botanic gardens, ours suffered from world wars, depressions, the declining commitment of public land managers and the emerging popularity of active sports and caravanning. A rejuvenation program led by Tommy Garnett and John Hawker, with some funding from the State Government, brought many back to life in the 1980s. Over the next couple of decades Friends groups came and some went, task-based maintenance became the norm, and beauty was sacrificed for efficiency.
We started our community group, the Camperdown Botanic Gardens and Arboretum Trust, in 2013, with the aim of making sure the place was held in trust for the future. We started with a landscape architect, a couple of horticulture graduates, several accomplished home gardeners, and a band of keen volunteers. We needed people with knowledge and enthusiasm, and we needed people willing to stand up against plans to divide the place up for other purposes. We were keen to see how good we could make it.
Planting and gardening have been our priority and are where we have directed our limited resources. Labelling, interpretation and features can wait. If our botanic garden is to have an educational function, the most basic place to start is encouraging people to see, enjoy and be inspired by plants. We choose plants that suit the growing conditions and are likely to thrive in the wind and the shade of old trees. We have started a small collection of Macaronesian flora beneath Bunce’s Canary Island Pines, and a New Zealand collection to add to Guilfoyle’s Cabbage Trees Cordyline australis and the Akiraho Olearia paniculata, which we have added to the National Trust (Victoria) Register of Significant Trees. We have also started a ‘cultural collection’ of plants from gardens in the local district, which represent something of the gardening history of the area.
Ten years on, things are looking promising. Visitors tell us how much they enjoy the beds and borders, the diversity of plantings – and the atmosphere. Birds and butterflies are voting with their feet (wings), and the occasional wallaby and koala drops by. Young mothers meet with their babies on a rug, and there is always someone with a camera.
The recent Growing Victoria’s Botanic Gardens funding program paid for new fencing for the 25-hectare site. This was a crucial step in enabling four hectares of our arboretum to be re-opened to public access. There is still a caravan park in Guilfoyle’s entrance drive, but it is obvious that it needs a better place for its own development and ours.
A golden Pencil Pine Cupressus ‘Swane’s Gold’, a popular cultivar developed in Sydney in 1958, wrapped in ivy, stands at our entrance. Two overgrown Bracelet Honey Myrtles recline (as elderly Melaleuca armillaris do) on the opposite side of the gateway, reminiscing about their moment in the fashion spotlight in the 1980s. In the arboretum a stunted specimen of Montpelier Maple Acer monspessulanum holds its ground as a rare survivor from the 1996 Flora for Victoria distribution of plants to mark the 150th anniversary of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. In the garden, two Weeping Cherries Prunus cvs. bring out the photographers every spring. Each of these reflects an effort at some time in the last 154 years to conserve the place. In 1982, writing for The Age, Tommy Garnett said there is no use in rejuvenating a garden if it immediately begins to sink back into senility. But there have been lots of starts and stops in the long history of our botanic garden and arboretum.
We are often asked what we are going to do about succession planning for our ageing volunteers – and for me in the role of honorary curator. If people are keen for the place to survive and be cared for into the future, they will have to step up and take their own action. We are focusing on making a difference now. Our aim is to leave a legacy for others to build on in the future, just as we have been building on the legacy of those who have gone before us.
Doyle, H. Camperdown Botanic Gardens and Arboretum Conservation Management Plan (draft), 2017, available at https://camperdownbotanicgardens.org.au/
