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Take a look at the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens

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Take a look at the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens

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Explore Indigenous plants at Long Island

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Explore Indigenous plants at Long Island

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Explore Long Island at Melbourne Gardens

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In this resource pack you will find:
· Stories of the wondrous world of plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
· Resources and activities for Educators and children to explore

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Tree stories from the Royal Botanic Gardens

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Tree stories from the Royal Botanic Gardens

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SERIES 32 | Episode 04
Jane Edmanson visits Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens to learn how the arborists there care for the mature trees as they age.
Arborist Jim Shugg says the team has to balance allowing trees to follow their natural form with the need to allow for the access and safety of visitors.

Trees play a very important ecological role, Jim says, with characteristics that young trees don't have, such as hollows, fissures in the bark, complex canopies - and these make a wonderful habitat for a range of organisms.

Soil biome under old trees continues to increase with richness as the trees age

One of the old river red gums in the gardens features in an old photo from about 1875, when it was already a mature tree. It's called the Cockatoo Tree because its hollows have been used for nesting by Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos for decades.

A Cockspur Coral Tree near the Herbarium, possibly planted in the 1880s, has been pollarded each year - the branches cut back each year to growth points, which keeps the tree compact.

Older trees often start to decline from the top down and these can be 'retrenched' by reducing some of the top growth, mimicking what happens in nature. Engineering solutions can also be used - such as metal braces and ties to support the weight of larger branches.

An ancient White Oak in the garden recently broke apart due to old age, however there are plans to incorporate the fallen limbs into a new feature for the garden.

RBG Landscape Architect Andrew Laidlaw explained the plans for the timber, which include transforming the main stump into a sculptural piece and honouring the tree's legacy by creating seats for visitors from some of the remaining limbs. Garden beds with native grasses and existing daffodils will embrace the whole area.

* NB: Erythrina crista-galli can be an environmental weed in some parts of Australia

Filmed on Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country | Melbourne, Vic

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Jane Edmanson visits Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens to learn how the arborists there care for the mature trees as they age. Arborist Jim Shugg says the team has to balance allowing trees to follow their natural form with the need to allow for the access and safety of visitors.

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Level F- 2 Geography

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175 years of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

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175 years of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

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2021 Marks Melbourne Garden's 175th year

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The Rainbirds by David Metzenthen - Books

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A CBCA Honour Book, THE RAINBIRDS has received much acclaim and will be brought to life during the September school holidays in a theatre production at the Melbourne Recital Hall.

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PDF document designed for use in schools by the Nursery and Garden Industry Australia.

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This is an article from the ABC about gardening with some hints on how to be more sustainable.

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Are you keen to get your kids off screens and into the garden this spring, or simply spend more time outside yourself?

Eight-year-old Caylee has been learning to make her very own garden with the help of Gardening Australia's Costa Georgiadis.

"I'm really excited to make my own garden grow ... Last night I was actually jumping on the bed because I was so excited," Caylee says.

Before the Gardening Buds podcast, Caylee and her family didn't know much about gardening: "We just got a plant and put it in the dirt and watered it."

But over the course of the podcast, she's learnt how to grow everything from fruits to veggies to flowers - and if you're keen to give it a try, you don't need a backyard to get started.

Life advice from Costa Georgiadis

Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis says patience and consistency are the keys to growth.

Read more

What's the first step when setting up a garden?

When setting up your first garden, it's important to put your " microclimate goggles" on and do a site assessment.

That means looking at your growing space, and thinking about the conditions there. Is it hot all day? Or cool and damp even when it's sunny? Is it protected, or does it get a lot of wind?

"[You can then go], 'OK, if this part of the garden is really hot in the afternoon, we won't grow the things that like just the morning sun'," Costa explains.

"Or, 'this part of the garden is protected. So that's where we can grow our tomatoes, because they'll get the heat off the wall. And if we put corn on this side of the tomatoes, it'll stop the hot afternoon sun because the corn grows taller'.

"So there's lots of little clues that you learn by looking at the site and it telling you what you can and can't grow."

The first step when setting up a garden is to put on your microclimate goggles.(ABC: Emma Gibbs )

Costa says a fun way to map the sun in your space is to draw on your pavement with chalk.

"Draw some lines for the sun at 9am and then go back out in an hour and see where the line is and get to understand how the earth works around your house, and find the warm places."

What plants should I choose?

You should choose plants that grow well in your garden, but you'll have more fun planting things that you like.

Caylee loves the smell of native mint, so made sure she planted some in her garden. There was also a certain vegetable she couldn't go without.

"My dad's Irish, so we use a lot and a lot and a lot of potatoes in our cooking," she says.

"So we [planted] potatoes ... now we don't have to go to the shops and buy them anymore. If we need potatoes and they're ripe, we can just walk over and get some."

Planting flowers in your garden will help attract bees.(ABC: Katharine Rogers )

Costa and Caylee found a fence in her garden, which they're using to build a vertical garden with climbing plants like strawberries.

They're also growing host plants so they can get dragonflies and butterflies, as well as flowers to attract bees.

Finding seedlings for free

Buying baby plants can get expensive - and might be near-impossible if you're in lockdown. Here are five ways to source them for free.

Read more

What equipment do I need?

Even if you have a small space, Caylee says you can have a garden just about anywhere - even in a little pot on your windowsill.

Caylee has a backyard, but everything she and Costa are growing is in containers, which are an easy solution for balconies, courtyards and rooftops.

Costa suggests finding containers secondhand during council clean-ups, or on Buy Nothing sites.

"You can grow in lots of different [types of] containers, so you really don't have to spend a lot of money to get started," he says.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Beaut Bottle Planters

Why you should start a garden journal

When setting up your first garden, Costa recommends starting up a garden journal too.

In your journal, you can record the data of everything happening with your plants.

For example, you can take note of the date you plant your cucumber, and when you see the first bud come up. Then you can write down when that first flower turns into the first baby cucumber, and count the days in between - say, nine days from seed to bud, 22 days to flower, etc.

"By collecting all this information, you start to understand how long things take," Costa says.

"When you have that information from this year, you can compare it to next year and you start to have all of your own ... knowledge for your garden.

By writing everything down, you'll learn more about your garden for next year.(ABC: Katharine Rogers )

He says you should keep track of everything you can: how many cucumbers did you grow from the one plant? How much did your total harvest weigh?

"You can't get that in a book because you're writing the book ... so that's the most valuable book for you and your and your garden," Costa says.

Be a part of the ABC Everyday community by joining our Facebook group.

What should parents keep in mind?

If you're a big kid keen to help a littler kid build their own garden, Costa says the key is just to have fun with it.

"Relinquish total control ... and don't worry if you make a little bit of mess," he says.

"Don't worry if some things die, don't worry if you pick one or two wrong plants or you overwater something, or something doesn't work.

"I still have failures, everyone does. It's not a failure - it's just learning."

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Eight-year-old Caylee is growing her first garden. Here's Costa's advice for her - ABC Everyday

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Are you keen to get your kids off screens and into the garden this spring, or simply spend more time outside yourself? Eight-year-old Caylee has been learning to make her very own garden with the help of Gardening Australia's Costa Georgiadis. "I'm really excited to make my own garden grow ...