Old views of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne

In 2011 I published some old images of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. I began collecting horticultural themed postcards nearly twenty years ago after reading an English book titled Postcards from Kew. This well illustrated work highlighted a large collection of old postcards of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. As a gardener I was intrigued by these images and went in search of Australian examples at markets and postcard fairs. Within a couple of years I had a collection of several hundred cards. While most of my collection is dominated by views of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney I also have many images of other gardens around the world. Here are a few postcards depicting the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.

Garden near the Temple of the Winds

The Botanic Gardens in Melbourne was officially opened in 1846. One of the most popular parts of the 96 acre site is the view from the Temple of the Winds. This classically influenced structure was built in 1902 as a tribute to the former Victorian colonial governor Charles La Trobe who selected the site for the gardens.

Due to it's weedy nature pampas grass is one
plant you will not see in the garden today

Many general views of the gardens show large numbers of people enjoying the grounds. As one of the conditions of entry proscribed the consumption of alcohol or tobacco within the garden, this may explain its popularity with visitors, especially mothers and children.

Tree ferns and palms near the Director's house

Much of the lush tropical plantings in the gardens date from the time of William Guilfoyle who was Director of the Botanic Gardens from 1873-1909. The blue-toned image above shows some of the plantings near his residence in the grounds.

Artificially coloured postcard view of
the gardens near the Princes Bridge

Sucullents were a popular planting in the gardens during the 19th century but lost popularity in the early years of the 20th century when they became associated with the weedy spread of prickly pear in the country.

The Tea House

Old postcard views of the garden often highlight lost buildings and other garden structures. Above we see a view of the Tea House which was opened in 1900. Sadly, this building was destroyed by fire in 1970.

View of one of the  attractive glasshouses

Along with general views of the gardens the conservatories were also popular with visitors. Here we see one such greenhouse filled with a winter display of Bergonias and Cape Primroses.

I hope you enjoyed these images of this much-loved garden. Click on the following link to view images of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney:
http://reflectivegardener.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/vintage-views-of-royal-botanic-gardens.html

Foraging

To quote an old proverb 'What's old is new again'. This is very much the case with the recent interest in foraging by chefs and foodies. Readers with an interest in this area should look at the article my wife recently wrote on the subject for the Sydney Morning Herald  link to foraging article

Tools of the trade: Secateurs

As a working gardener I love the tools of my trade especially my secateurs. Several years ago I organised a couple of collectors fairs at historic Experiment Farm Cottage in Sydney for the National Trust and the Australian Garden History Society. The fairs in 2003 and 2005 were known as the Heritage Garden Tool Show and both events received much positive media attention. For the first fair I researched the history of secateurs for a give-away factsheet.

Some of the pruners on display at the Heritage Garden Tool Show

History of Secateurs

Secateurs were invented by the Marquis Bertrand de Moleville. He was a French aristocrat and politician who had to flee his homeland for exile in Britain during the revolution of 1789. Unlike many of his class he escaped the guillotine blade and this may have inspired him to invent the ‘cutters’ known in French as secateurs in 1815.

Prior to Bonville’s invention European gardeners had used scissors, pruning knives, bill hooks and shears to cut and trim foliage and small branches. De Moleville's new secateurs were a versatile and efficient hand tool and quickly became popular throughout continental Europe. English speaking male gardeners were less taken by this new French invention which was marketed in Britain as suitable only for ladies. This changed later in the 19th century when influential garden writers such as William Robinson promoted their use.

Three 19th century secateurs from my collection

Padua Botanic Garden

I'm sometimes asked for a list of my favourite gardens to visit in Europe. One that quickly comes to mind is the Padua Botanic Garden in northern Italy, near Venice. Although I have only visited the Orto Botanico di Padova twice - once in high summer and once in deep winter - this institution ticks all my garden history boxes.

An aerial view of the Orto Botanico 

While the botanic garden at Padua was not the first to be established (Pisa is one year older), it is recognised as the oldest in the world set in its original location. A fine example of the High Renaissance interest in science the garden was set up by Padua University to teach medical students about therapeutic plants used in healing. At the time the study of botany was an essential part of medical training, a coexistence that continued up to the middle years of the 20th century.

I found this early photographic view
of the gardens in a Padua antique shop

Another early view of the gardens this time showing 
the glasshouse surrounding the 'Goethe palm' 

The oldest plant in the garden is a Chamaerops humilis var. arborescens, planted in 1585, commonly known as the 'Goethe Palm', because the German poet and philosopher mentioned it in his essay The Metamorphoses of Plants (1790). This semi-hardy palm is situated in a purpose built glasshouse (see above). Many other trees in the Arboretum date from the 18th,19th and 20th centuries.

During the warmer months of the year
many of the frost tender plants - such
as these succulents - are moved outside

In 1997 the institution was listed as a UNESCO World heritage Site on the following grounds: 'The Botanical Garden of Padua is the original of all botanical gardens in the world, and represents the birth of science, of scientific exchanges, and understanding of the relationship between nature and culture. It has made a profound contribution to the development of many modern scientific, notably botany, medicine, chemistry, ecology and pharmacy.'

Within easy reach of Venice Padua is well worth a visit. Although badly damaged by bombing in World War II the city is filled with many wonderful historic buildings. Personal favourites are the Scrovegni Chapel (also known as the Apollo Chapel) decorated by Giotto, and the 13th century Baptistery decorated with frescoes by Giusto de Menabuoi.

I would love to hear from readers who share my enthusiasm for this garden and city.


Further reading in English: The Botanical Garden of Padua 1545-1995, edited by Alessandro Minelli, Marsilio, Venice, 1995

Gnome lover

The first garden I truly admired was a gnomery I saw in the early 1960s. As a little boy I was awestruck by the hundreds, literately hundreds, of brightly coloured little figures looking at me behind one Welsh gnome-garden fence.  Perhaps this early memory left me with a lasting affection for these fun-loving ornaments as I have since acquired several examples which populace parts of my house and garden. My interest led me to writing a brief history of the gnome for the Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens in 2002. There have been many, so called, jocular studies of these ornaments so I was pleased to discover a serious work by the respected English garden historian Twigs Way, titled Garden Gnomes: a History. 

A Sydney gnome garden

As well as looking at the mythic origins of the gnome the author discusses the different manufacturers in Britain and around the world. One of the leading makers in the UK was Major Garden Ornaments, a firm founded by the parents of former 1980s British Prime Minister John Major, which was in operation from 1930 until 1962. These were the boom years of gnome sales, which reached its peak after the release of the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

The author of this blog with
 one of his larger garden companions

By the late 1960s the gnome was perceived as vulgar and 'low-rent' and became a symbol of derision. In recent years cement constructed figures have been partially replaced by cheaper plastic constructed versions, and there has been a nostalgic revival of appreciation for these fun, somewhat kitsch, ornaments. Despite this, the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain maintains a long-standing ban on the gnome being exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show.

One of my more refined gnomes
 which dates from the late 19th century

Appropriately for the subject of Twig Way's book this work is diminutively sized. It is also well-illustrated and gives an excellent overview of the history of gnomes from their mythic origins in Germanic folklore through their early high-quality production years up to the time of mass-sales in the twentieth century. This book is a must have for all garden historians and for all those with a true interest in garden ornamentation. 

Garden gnomes:  a history, by Twigs Way, Shire Books, Oxford, 2009, UK, RRP £5.99, ISBN 978-0-7478-0710-0

An arresting image

Several months ago I came across an unusual etching of a street scene in an antique market.  Divorced of any cars or people the main subject in the print was the power lines and the mature hoop pines growing at the edge of a park. The work was untitled but was signed Christine A. Pecket and dated [19]35. I didn't buy the work at the time, but regreted not doing so as soon as I left the building.

Etching by Christine A. Pecket

Luckly two months later the etching was still for sale on my next visit to the market. The image was too striking to ignore, so, this time, I purchased the work. Captivated by the unusual composition I immediately wanted to learn about its creator. I soon discovered that Ms Pecket was not mentioned in the New McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art (the standard general reference on Australian artists) or Heritage: The National Women's Art Book (the main reference for Australian female artists).

The signature had a clumsy youthful feel as if written by a hand not used to writing her name. Perhaps Christine Pecket was a school girl when she made the etching, this might explain the absence of a title and edition numbers. Despite the crude signature the image was most arresting and deserved further enquiry.

Despite the lack of knowledge in the standard art history references, I soon discovered that there were a few interesting paintings by her as well as some pieces of pottery illustrated on the internet. I also discovered that she had written an autobiography in the 1970s. Further research on some on-line sites revealed that she had lived for many years in Sydney, close to where I live.

While the previously mentioned reference books were unforthcoming I next turned to the Design & Art Australia Online (DAAO), an excellent free-access website managed by the University of New South Wales. This site has the ambitious goal of documenting every artist who is working or has worked in Australia. So far about 8,000 artists have been documented and I am pleased to have been involved with the project since its launch in 2007.

Christine Pecket's autobiography, Some Facets of My Life, tells of her battles recovering from polio when she was a girl and how she battled with her severe disabilities during her lifetime. Despite being forced to labour in many unglamorous jobs she worked as an artist for over forty years. At the end of her book there are a number of her images reproduced including the street image illustrated above.

For the record, in her book, the illustrated etching is titled 'Ormond Street, Ashfield' and shows the street where she lived during the 1930s when she was studying art in Sydney. The park in Pecket's etching is Ashfield Park, and this fine Victorian-era reserve still has many fine examples of hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) as well as circular beds of canna lilies.

The distinctive shape of the hoop pine

Intriged by Christine Pecket my research into her creative life continues. Hopefully my biography will appear on the DAAO website in the next couple of months.  http://www.daao.org.au/ In the meantime if anyone has any information about her or has examples of her work I would love to here from them.

Vintage views of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

An early 20th century view of the Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Many years ago I came across a book titled Postcards from Kew. This well illustrated work highlighted a collection of old postcards of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. Inspired I decided to search for similar postcards showing views of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (RBG). Within weeks I had discovered a couple of dozen images dating from the early years of the last century. As a garden historian I was intrigued by these images and went in search of more at markets and postcard fairs. Within a couple of years I had a collection of several hundred cards. Clearly the botanic gardens in Sydney was just as popular with postcard collectors as was Kew.

In this beautifully printed German card we see a
 glimpse of Sydney Harbour from the Botanic Gardens

Several years ago I showed part of my collection to Judy Blood and Miguel Garcia of the RBG research library. Fascinated by these images they asked permission to scan the works for research purposes. Recently a series of these images have been printed by the RBG for sale at their bookshop. Many of thepostcards used come from my collection while others come from the album of RBG guide Jenny Pattison, a fellow postcard collector. The ‘Vintage Views’ cards sell for $1, and there are mounted prints which sell for a very reasonable $9.95. These images were recently used in an interactive walk in the gardens where the vintage views where set up at the same spot where the original photographs were taken.

In the back ground of this postcard
is the Chess Pavillion built in 1897

One of my cards being used in the Vintage Views
 self-guided walk at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
While the Chess Pavillion is still on site the ornamental
 fountain in the postcard image is long gone

Why we think of the brief text based message as correspondence from our time - think of  Twitter, SMS and e-mail - but the succinct message dates from the mid 19^th century when the telegram was invented. Later in the century the postcard was introduced. The collecting of postcards became a craze around the world from the 1890s to the time of World War One and many photographers and publishers produced cards with tempting images of people and places, including public parks and gardens.

Classically inspired statuary near the Levy Fountain

Swiss printed view of the Botanical Gardens
looking east towards the palm grove

While most of my postcard images are Sydney based I also have some fine views of other towns and cities in Australia and around the world. Every few weeks I will post some more postcard images from my collection.  Any requests?

Three cheers for the old mole

I was sad to hear that the guru of garden tools Richard Bird has decided to shut up shop. Richard is known to many as The Old Mole and was a regular stall holder at garden themed festivals and conferences in south-east Australia over the last decade or so.

Richard Bird (centre) talking tools with a customer 

I first met Richard at a garden fair in the late 1990s where he was selling his antique and reproduction tools and garden equipment as well as displaying his wonderful collection of garden paraphernalia. Over the years we became friends and we often discussed and traded old tools. Inspired by his passion for the subject I organised a couple of antique tool shows in Sydney which helped gain further interest in the subject. At both these events Richard and his trademark green Morris Minor van were present and he gave several talks on the history of tools and his collection.

The Old Mole display at an Australian plant fair

After many years Richard (never Dicky) has decided to retire from active trading. Rather than flogging his collection to the highest bidder he has decided to donate a significant part of it to a soon to be established garden history museum at Carrick Hill in South Australia. Hopefully this bequest will inspire others to do the same.

The Education of a Gardener

For anyone infected with the gardening bug, an early symptom is the intense desire to learn more about the subject. While television and radio programmes can be informative, they are by their nature fleeting and hardly ever accessible when a problem or query arises. The obvious answer is to build up a specialist personal reference library, and have these texts close at hand. While garden books are often informative, they are expensive, so care needs to be taken in choosing titles which are well-written and their content suitable for your climatic conditions.

There are literally hundreds of garden books published each year in Australia and around the English-speaking world. They can be loosely divided into a number of sub-categories: how-to books, plant IDs, horticultural textbooks, plant monographs, garden profiles, and the eclectic basket of “miscellaneous themes”.

HOW-TO-BOOKS

Like cooks, gardeners need to have a few entry-level texts as an introduction to all aspects of the craft. While most how-to books are large and well illustrated, there are some that should be avoided. Many multinational publishers produce garden books aimed for the British, North American and European markets. Their information is general in nature and often unsuitable for Australian climates.

A 1950s cover of the Yates Garden Guide

For me the best all-purpose book available locally is the Yates Garden Guide. First published in 1895, this book has been updated more than 50 times during its long history and is packed with accurate information suitable for all our climatic areas. If you must have only one garden book in your library, that book should be Yates Garden Guide. As a must-have book it makes an ideal housewarming present when a new garden awaits.

PLANT IDs

All gardeners want to learn the names of plants growing around them, be they ornamentals, vegetables, trees and even weeds and there is a plethora of books available for such a purpose. There are several weighty tomes brimming with photographs of plants, which can be very useful in identifying the name of that sickly perfumed plant growing over the neighbour’s fence or the large red-flowered bush growing in the backyard.

My personal favourites in this category our Stirling Macobys, What Flower is That? and the Reader’s Digest Garden Encyclopedia. Identification in both these books is based on plant type and variety of flower, which is illustrated in thumbnail photographs. While these guides are suitable for the non-botanist, specialist identification guides are essential for those with some intermediate or advanced technical plant knowledge, such as the five-volume Horticultural Flora of South Eastern Australia by Roger Spencer.

HORTICULTURAL TEXTBOOKS

Of the many books used in teaching horticulture, there are two works that have lasted the test of time. Soil science, I must confess, was never my strongest subject when I was a horticultural student, so I relied heavily on Kevin Handreck and Neil Black’s Growing Media for Ornamental Plants & Turf for technical help. Despite the dry title, this book is essential for the serious gardener or horticulturist keen to lean more about the science behind plant nutrition.

While knowledge of soil science is not essential for every gardener, knowledge of plant health is, so every gardener should have a copy of Judy McMaugh’s, What Garden Pest or Disease is That?  Thanks to the detailed photographs and text the reader can clearly identify all the major pests and diseases found in Australian plants and ways to eradicate them. As pest and disease management has changed much in recent years, readers should try and locate a recent edition.

PLANT MONOGRAPHS

While introductory guides supply accurate information, it’s mainly general in nature. For those wanting cultural advice about different types of plants thousands of specialist guides are available often written by expert gardeners for different audiences such as home gardeners, horticulturists and botanists.

Illustrated books featuring high-profile gardens have been around for many years, having grown out of souvenir guides to private homes and National Trust gardens. While they are especially popular in Britain and the United States, there have been few local examples apart from books on the major botanic gardens and prominent private gardens. One of the best private garden books is The Garden at Bronte by the prominent food and garden writer Leo Schofield. Beautifully illustrated this book records Leo's eight-year project to restore Bronte House, a mid-19th century property in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

With the cult of celebrity taking over the western world, it was inevitable that profiles about famous gardeners would join the rows of books about famous chefs and sportsmen. Often little more than elaborate portfolios of the designers’ works, these vanity monographs offer few insights into the life and work of the designer. In my view, critical attention on any artist or designer should be left until after their death.

THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOKS

Much of the writing available is aimed at the entry-level gardening reader. Many gardeners have been involved with landscape design for a number of decades and demand a little more meat in their garden books. Every few years, a truly original book comes out, which is worth reading again and again. Two of my favourites are The Nature of Gardens edited by Peter Timms, and The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, edited by Richard Aitken and Michael Looker. In The Nature of Gardens, Timms asked 10 Australian writers what gardens mean to them, why they are important, and how we can come to better understand our urban environment. 

The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens is one of the most original books ever written on Australian gardens and was written in association with the Australian Garden History Society. Like other 'Ox Comps', this well-illustrated reference gives the keen gardener a concise introduction to the world of Australian gardening. Reflecting the diversity of the book, entries include well-researched histories of prominent gardens and designers as well as quirky items such as the history of the gnome and the tyre swan. I have a soft-spot for this book as I wrote several entries including the one on gnomes.

WHERE TO FIND QUALITY GARDEN BOOKS

While most bookshops sell garden books, many of their titles are aimed at those buying presents for relatives with an interest in gardening: “Grandad likes roses, lets get him a book on that, - this one looks nice”. While Grandad or Grandma may indeed like roses, they may prefer a more specialist book on heritage roses or plants raised by specialist growers such as David Austin.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS

   

Yates Garden Guide

What Flower is That? by Stirling Macoboy, revised ed New Holland Press

Readers Digest Garden Encyclopaedia

Horticultural Flora of South Eastern Australia [five volumes] by Roger Spencer, University of New South Wales Press

Growing Media for Ornamental Plants & Turf, by Kevin Handreck and Neil Black, University of New South Wales Press

What Garden Pest or Disease is That? by Judy McMaugh, New Holland

The Garden at Bronte, by Leo Schofield, Penguin

The Nature of Gardens, by Peter Timms, Allen and Unwin

The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, edited by Richard Aitken and Michael Looker, Oxford University Press

For keen gardeners, it’s well worth visiting the garden bookshops found in the larger botanic gardens. For an even better range you should try and visit Florilegium, Australia’s only specialist garden bookshop. Now in its 22nd year, Florilegium at 65 Derwent Street, Glebe in Sydney (T: 02 9571 8222) is open seven days a week and has a mail order list. Shop owner, Gil Teague, has his own favourites, such as the North American author, Michael Pollan. According to Teague, Pollan’s thoughtful and witty debut book, Second Nature, was the “best read of the last seventeen years”. He also enjoyed Pollan’s recent work on food ethics, Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Do you have any suggestions for garden books to add to my list?

This article is an edited version of a piece I wrote for Wellbeing Organic Garden magazine.