Kings Park and Conservation Values—November Main Club Meeting Report

Grady Brand is the Senior Curator of the Kings Park and Botanic Garden. He spoke to us at the November meeting about the role that the park plays in promoting the conservation value of the Western Australian flora. Grady has worked for Kings Park for 39 years; he remembers the very day when he started work as a horticultural student in 1978.

The Kings Park Botanic Garden was opened by then Premier Sir David Brand in 1965, after seed collecting had begun and a nursery established three years previously. Developed on 17 hectares of sloping ground overlooking the Swan River, today it displays about 3000 native species from the various botanical regions of Western Australia, with plant labels and interpretive signage. A fulltime seed-collector is still employed collecting the State’s flora. The main focus of the garden is to encourage people to value the flora of our own state. For example, the Acacia Steps show the evolution of the Western Australian wattles from the more primitive to the more highly evolved species. It features mosaics in the steps showing the varying phyllode forms of Acacias. The exceptional diversity of Banksias in WA is illustrated in the Banksia Garden. The Conservation Garden displays the threatened plants of WA. An Aboriginal cultural self-guided walk trail (the Boodja Gnarning Walk) is a more recent innovation. It’s the big Boab tree that captures the attention of a large proportion of visitors. This tree was transported from the Kimberley when it had to be removed to make way for the construction of a bridge. All these sections of the garden combine to show that our state is a special place botanically.

The annual Kings Park Festival also aims to celebrate and educate the public about the state’s flora. It began as a small display in Forrest Place and grew into a four-day event and now extends to a free, family-friendly event lasting the whole month of September. Each year it attracts about 600,000 visitors. As Grady put it, the festival reminds people that there is more to Western Australian wildflowers than the pink everlasting!

Volunteer groups—from within the Friends of Kings Park—play a large part in supporting the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority (BGPA). Growing Friends have annual plant sales which raise money for the park and give people the opportunity to grow WA native plants that are not commercially available. The Master Gardeners provide a free advisory service, run coffee mornings with horticultural talks and assisted with the establishment of a “Grow Me at Home” garden. Other volunteer groups that play significant roles include the Kings Park Guides and the Honour Avenue Group.

The role of women in the history of WA is a theme that has been developed in the Park, as part of the Botanic Garden. It began with the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Fountain, a centrepiece to the WA Botanic Garden being re-built in 1999. The Water Garden (above, photo D Blumer) and Bookleaf Memorial are part of the Women of WA theme and there is also artwork by a female artist in the adjoining Banksia Garden.

The LotteryWest Federation Walkway is a treetop walk to celebrate the centenary of Federation. It includes Aboriginal artwork that reflects the significance of the site to the Nyoongar people. This attracts thousands of people to the garden each year. An extension of this is Beedawong, an Aboriginal meeting place designed by Nyoongar people for their story-telling, music and dance.

There are many other facets to the park. In the Eastern States Flora Garden there is the Place of Reflection—a quiet space designed for the community to enjoy, especially for those who have experienced grief or loss. Opening again soon after a period of renovation is the Rio Tinto-sponsored Naturescape, a 6-hectare site designed to help children connect with nature, using hands-on experience and imagination to play and build in a bush environment. About 12 concerts are held in the Park each year. These help financially and heighten people’s awareness of the Park generally.

Grady remembers fondly the contribution of former CEO Steve Hopper, who he says was a visionary leader. It was through his encouragement that the Kings Park horticultural team displayed WA plants at the 1997 and 2000 Chelsea Flower shows in Britain. This world exposure helped launch the upgrading of Kings Park and Botanic Garden to what we all enjoy today. This year, Kings Park helped with providing advice on a selection of WA plants to be grown in the Mediterranean biome at the Eden Project in Cornwall. And over the last 20 years Kings Park has sent the seed of about 1600 wild-sourced WA species to the Millennium Seed Bank, which is a Kew Gardens initiative. This seed bank represents the greatest concentration of living seed-plant diversity on earth, and aims to store 20 per cent of the world’s flora.

Kings Park has a large band of volunteer guides, a training program for horticulture students and a science program looking into such problems as breaking seed dormancy. It has also been involved with WA Main Roads in an effort to strategically improve the plantings along highways and freeways of the Perth CBD, under a project called The Wildflower Capital Initiative. This aims to promote WA flora, improve the sense of place and celebrate the state’s natural biodiversity in a way that will minimise the use of water.

Gardens are “…very frail and ephemeral things, so utterly dependent on the dedication of their carers”, says Grady. So the aim is to ensure that Kings Park continues to be well-funded to protect it as a people’s park which is much loved and respected by the community. Grady extolled the commitment of Kings Park’s staff and volunteers to preserving the intrinsic values that make it a special place, and to continue to implement practical ways to promote and celebrate the special nature of Western Australian flora.

Mike Gregson