[Joanna Savage]

This chaotic olive grows on a bank of the Brisbane River in the old Botanic Gardens in SE Queensland. It must have been flooded by at least a metre of water on a couple of occasions in the past 20 years. The olive is certainly adaptable. I would like to know the curatorial decision behind 'not pruning'.

[Trevor Australis]

Good Grief Joanna, Do you think Botanic Gardens are repositories of skilled plant cultivation nowadays? This is certainly not the case in Australian bot gdns, esp. where such exotic plants as olives are concerned. Such trees are barely tolerated and most often destroyed as introduced pest species. Some people do care............ I went past a newly planted grove of rescued olive trees this morning. Heavily pruned, and possibly re-worked with new grafts, these old trees will have a new life under the skilled hands of an Italian market gardener. Even when olives were first grown here in the 1850's no-one knew how to look after them so they were left unpruned until a Snr Villanis (I think) was 'imported' from an International Exhibition in Melbourne in about 1890 to show how they should be trained/ pruned. When he got stuck into the wildly overgrown trees there was a huge public outcry about the destruction of the 'noble trees' and work was stopped. Snr Villanis went back to Italy and after the furore died down the remaining trees were pruned properly - tho' not quite so harshly. The trees are still alive and very productive in the Adelaide Parklands.

[Joanna Savage]

Bravi, Italian Market Gardeners in Adelaide. I have visited these bot gardens in Brisbane irregularly for about 30 years. It's an idyllic spot with sunny boats large and small in one part of the view and in the other, grand old trees left over from early plant acclimatisation days. But this year in March it all looked a bit sad. Surely there used to be a lake with water-birds in the garden at one time? It is well used as a recreation park for city walkers and runners and smokers. Very few are interested in the plants. The campus of a nearby University crowds the site, but at least that means that the water dragons (very large lizards) get plenty of pickings from the student canteen and cafe.

I am not sure whether to thank Trevor for disillusioning me about how bot gardens are run these days. I had regarded them as oases of expert knowledge and practice. I wonder if it is that they have to be run on impossibly small budgets, or whether there is not political or public interest in maintaining them at a high standard. Something of both, I suppose.

[Trevor Australis]

Like most other govt agencies Bot Gdns have been through a pretty rough patch for the last 10 yrs at least. Funding cuts are now called 'required efficiencies' and staff levels have dropped significantly. In our local BG a wisteria tunnel took one skilled gardener two weeks to prune properly............ now it isn't done at all except to slash back growth that is an OHSW risk, or gets in the way of the mechanised 'Gators used by the staff to get around. Once the ratio of gardeners to administrators was about 7:1 now its the other way around: there are more administrators than hands-on gardeners. BG's have also been reviewed endlessly and been obliged to redefine their key role; thus they are now strictly scientific organisations, the rest & recreation/ public education roles have largely been ditched. Thus in our BG there are no major collections of decorative plants apart from native plants: the rest - exotics - have been disbanded, dispersed or destroyed - bromeliads, orchids, ferns, succulents, cacti, begonias, palms, perennials and so on. The heat in the biggest greenhouse was turned off two years ago! All those growing skills and plant knowledge lost. Economic rationalism and Baroness Thatcher have much to answer for.

[Jill S]

WOW!! the old girl certainly got around didn't she?