9 minute read
Trans-Tasman teamwork
Kate Roud, Team Leader Main Gardens, Wellington Botanic Garden, Aotearoa New Zealand
A BGANZ Professional Development Award 2021 Report
‘Life’, as John Lennon so aptly put it, ‘is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.’ At the height of the global pandemic in 2021 while curator of the Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) collection at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, (RBGV) Melbourne, I applied for a BGANZ professional development award. At this time I had been curator since 2014 and through scholarship trips, attending conferences and visiting botanic gardens in New Zealand, I had built an extensive and valued network of curators and other colleagues.
As a target of its Landscape Succession Strategy, RBGV is working to increase the number of wild-collected taxa across all living collections. Peter Symes, then RBGV Melbourne curator horticulture, and I had targeted Auckland, and regions to the north, as having a comparable climate to Melbourne, and I was keen to establish a seed-collecting ‘hub’ in New Zealand to assist us with managing imports. Therefore, it was the perfect fit to work with Emma Simpkins, then botanical records and conservation specialist at Auckland Botanic Gardens (ABG), on a trans-Tasman partnership. We were mindful, however, of the need to build relationships with iwi (Māori tribes) local to the Auckland region to ensure that any collection of seed from their land was respectful and adhered to the Wai 262 Treaty protocols regarding indigenous flora. In April 2021 we held a Zoom meeting with Emma and discussed the following:
• organising a joint seed-collecting trip to Auckland and surrounds in March 2022
• establishing ABG as a hub for the collection of seed from private donors and botanic gardens. ABG would assist with the process of seed testing at approved laboratories and sending certified seed material on to the RBGV
• establishing initial and ongoing contact between ABG/RBGV Melbourne and seed-testing facility AsureQuality to enable and embed future seed importation pathways
• establishing monitoring programs at RBGV Melbourne for New Zealand plants on behalf of ABG and sharing information
• establishing a seed exchange to assist living collections at ABG
• hosting students and other professionals from ABG at Melbourne, and vice versa, on mutually beneficial exchanges and projects.
Following this productive discussion, Emma agreed that ABG would support and participate in this enterprise. Discussions were ongoing as we continued to refine the scope of the project, identify issues and requirements, and develop target plant lists and itineraries in a truly collaborative process. Given the situation with closed borders, extensive lockdowns in our hometowns and changed priorities at work, our plans were necessarily ‘pencilled in’ and prone to the inevitable pivoting.
And then life really happened. In 2022 when the border reopened, I fulfilled a long-held dream and finally made it across the Tasman to live in New Zealand, and I am now team leader main gardens at Wellington Botanic Garden (WBG). There were other changes too. Emma Simpkins had moved on to become senior regional adviser flora at Auckland Council and Peter Symes headed up north as curator of Cooktown Botanic Gardens in Queensland.
It was a tough call to leave behind my beloved ANZ collection, as well as all my amazing friends and colleagues at RBGV Melbourne but I went with the promise that I would still do whatever I could to work with new colleagues for the benefit of New Zealand flora, climate change adaptation in botanic gardens, and our living collections.
I landed in Wellington in May 2022 and hit the ground running in my new role, or at least staggering — those Welly hills were killers at the beginning! There was much to do, such as the usual policies and procedures of a new employer to take on board, a huge workload to tackle and a new life to establish. Living in Wellington, it also made sense to include Ōtari, the only native botanic garden in New Zealand (which I had visited many times), into the trans-Tasman partnership.
Considering all these changes, I decided to use my award to attend the 7th Global Botanic Gardens Congress in Melbourne in September 2022, with colleagues from WBG and Ōtari Native Botanic Garden (ŌNBG), introduce them to my former colleagues and to tour around the ANZ collection at the RBGV with my successor, Bronte McVeity.
The group I travelled with to attend the congress were Tim Park, team manager (ŌNBG), Karin Van Der Walt, conservation and science adviser (ŌNBG), Megan Ireland, team leader (ŌNBG) and Marion Saunders, team leader, education (WBG).
As we all gathered at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, there was no hiding the absolute delight at simply being together, face-to-face, talking plants again. In our home countries, we were all experiencing the pandemic in many different and challenging ways and for the organisers to have realised such a complex event had to be applauded.
Influence and Action: Botanic Gardens as Agents of Change — this was the ‘call to arms’ title of the congress and with a wealth of engaging but concurrent presentations on offer, it was tough to choose where to be each day. I opted to attend those with climate change adaptation as the main topic as this had been my main challenge as a curator at RBGV Melbourne.
Since the groundbreaking Assessment of the climate change risk to the living plant collections in the Melbourne Gardens, RBGV (Kendal & Farrar, 2017), work has continued there to improve plant selection and landscape succession. Risk assessments have been incorporated into the propagation request system to help curators identify climate suitable taxa. As the ANZ collection had been identified as likely being most under threat, I was keen to attend the launch of the Climate Resilience Assessment Tool: A Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens Initiative, presented by Peter Symes, Dave Kendal, Paul Smith, Clare Hart and Tessa Kum. I reflected on how fortunate I was to have been at the gardens to benefit from this exciting work and I look forward to sharing it with colleagues at WBG and ŌNBG. I also enjoyed workshops on getting the most from the BGCI’s data tools, disaster readiness for botanic gardens adapting to climate change and living collections development and curation.
It was wonderful after the conference to step out into a Melbourne spring and walk around the ANZ collection with Megan and Bronte, talking plants, exchanging ideas and suggestions, and discussing challenges.
I loved seeing all my favourites in bloom, especially the Tairāwhiti Ngutukākā East Coast Kākābeak Clianthus puniceus albus, whose seeds were gifted to RBGV Melbourne by Graeme Atkins who is renowned for his commitment to the preservation and restoration of New Zealand’s natural heritage. We took a video for him so he could see that this taonga (treasure) is thriving in Melbourne, is much admired and helps to spread the conservation message about which he is so passionate.
All too soon, it was time to head back to Wellington and continue settling into my new role and life. I am sure that many of us on the ground are still tackling post-COVID workloads that have increased due to lockdowns and the challenges of accessing our collections. A year’s missed renovation pruning and seed collection, short-staffing due to budget reductions or constraints and even lack of lithium battery supplies for tools, all add up and makes even ‘business as usual’ challenging. The things that we all love to do, such as engaging with colleagues in other gardens or countries on shared projects, inevitably take a back seat.
In writing this article and with so much change I felt sad that progress on the trans-Tasman partnership has been limited. To progress it, I arranged a catchup with Barbara Wheeler, curator at ABG, and Megan at ŌNBG. Barbara explained that ABG’s priority is developing a strategic focus for ex situ conservation and is concentrating its efforts on the conservation of threatened native plants in the Auckland region. The 2023 Conservation Status of Vascular Plant Species in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland report states the region’s flora is now in a worse state than a decade ago. ABG remains open, however, to knowledge sharing and staff exchanges.
At ŌNBG, Megan advised that their collections’ review is almost complete, and their focus is on better planning for each garden, but they will also support the partnership into the future. At RBGV Melbourne, Bronte is now permanently in the curators’ role, and I know that the collection is in great hands. There is also a new director and chief executive, David Harland, and Dermot Molloy has stepped into the senior curator horticulture role. They have advised that it is unlikely that there will be any visits at this point in time, but they remain open to information exchange.
I’m enjoying my new role and its many challenges and remain firmly committed to being the trans-Tasman link that brings friends and colleagues together in support of the flora of New Zealand. I encourage friends at all New Zealand’s botanic gardens to view the collection at Melbourne as a ‘living lab’ and a resource for learning that is already showing the effects of climate change on New Zealand flora. I have sown many seeds in this endeavour, and I long for the time when the conditions are right for them to germinate. The challenge of climate change still faces us as one of the main risks to the future health of plant diversity, both in our collections and in the natural environment. As stewards of botanic gardens, it is vital to stay the course and work collectively to extend our successes – therefore, Kia kaha, stay strong!
I extend my gratitude to BGANZ for the award and look forward to supporting its future endeavours.
