All over Australia there are dedicated gardeners, horticulturalists and environmentalists who love Australian plants and love growing them. They know how to do it, they succeed, they grow individual specimens and vast native gardens. To those of us who don’t or think they can’t, it seems miraculous! And yet it is all down to science .. and hard work.

Ever since the earliest European ships visited Australia, botanists have been discovering and renaming the plants which Indigenous people had been living with and using for generations. Both systems of naming drew on the metaphor of the family. For indigenous people the families reflected the kinship relations of all people, languages, animals, plants and places. For the European botanists, the families were related according to patterns discerned when comparing the parts of a flower or cone.  (See Helen Verran’s wonderful article, Verran, H. (2008). ‘Science and The Dreaming’, Issues 82: 21-24.)

Over time, as people attempted to grow Australian plants, and experimented with soil types, fertilizers, weather conditions, germination and propagation methods, a body of knowledge grew .. and was shared, as all good science is.

The beauty of this kind of gardening science is that it can be carried out by one person with a few plants and a small plot, or taken to wonderful extremes, as has happened in Currency Creek, South Australia, where Dean Nicole has created what he has called a ‘zoo of trees’, all eucalypts. https://dn.com.au/Currency_Creek_Arboretum.html

This eucalyptus arboretum creates a natural laboratory where specific questions can be researched, documented and shared through formal channels, such as science journals, building up the science of eucalypts. On the other hand, much of the knowledge which has been gleaned over the years in which people have been deliberately studying Australian plants and propagating them, is shared in less formal ways .. through channels like the Australian Plant Society, https://apsvic.org.au/ , and individually published books. (Just look at the book shelves in a gardeners home!)

This knowledge also includes that shared verbally amongst growers as they meet. A sort of tacit shared knowledge emerges, allowing growers to know and share observations. They may predict with some confidence ..

‘As with animals, many plant species are very adaptable and will tolerate a range of conditions, which may stand them in good stead for climate change. Those that gardeners have successfully grown away from their natural habitat will also help preserve the species when their natural habitat is destroyed either directly or indirectly by the hand of mankind.’

The same grower did however remark, that it’s probably best not to mention that many plants are planted on a wing and a prayer, in the vain hope that they will survive! Happily many do! As another gardener put it,

Plant them in the right spot and they will grow. You need to try and understand the plant, plant them and see how they go. Accept there will be inevitable losses along the way. Science is always about observing and learning.