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Campaign for an avenue of honour Gemma Starr
Until 9 August 2016, Bendigo East’s ‘Anzac Avenue’ remained the earliest surviving example of these Victorian avenues. This article discusses the history of ‘Anzac Avenue’ and the author’s two-year campaign to preserve this very early avenue of honour. It puts the Education Department’s Anzac Avenue planting initiative into the context of Victorian state school responses to World War I.
Roe 8: from freight link to green link Andrea Gaynor
The extension of Roe Highway, locally known as Roe 8, had been part of Perth’s transport planning since 1955 but became redundant as the city evolved. After an extensive and open consultation process, a 2002 review recommended against its construction. In early 2017, a community watched in horror and anguish as a thriving expanse of urban bushland was bulldozed to make way for a road that will not now be built.
The garden of Valetta, Sydney Margaret Chambers
The English-born gardener Edward Howlett may have laid out the splendid and sizeable garden of Valetta on Sydney’s Gore Hillduring his time as gardener at Valetta. The property was renovated by George Robert Whiting, and was demolished in 1939.
Modern-day plant hunting Alistair Watt
From 1985 to 2000 the author made a number of plant-collecting trips to Chile, Fiji, New Caledonia and New Zealand. This article lists my principal introductions into Australia and (in a few cases, as noted) a number of species received from other collectors.
‘Where have all the flower carpets gone?’ Glenn Cooke
Floral carpets are among the most spectacular of any floral displays presented in celebratory events. Australia’s floral carpet history reveals an important connection with Queensland artist and art teacher Betty Quelhurst.
Charles Joseph La Trobe’s garden (Part 2) Sandra Pullman
The garden at La Trobe’s Cottage is full of interesting plants that have connections to La Trobe, his friends and family.
Eastern obsession Peter Crane
With its unique leaves and astonishing life story, the ginkgo is one of the true stars in the botanical firmament. Fossils of its distinctive leaves show us that between about 200 and 100 million years ago the ginkgo and its extinct relatives were widespread across our planet, and that the single living species Ginkgo biloba is the last representative of a once much more diverse group of plants. The ginkgo is the classic botanical living fossil.
Olive Pink today Anne Cochrane
The Northern Territory garden bearing her name is named after Olive Muriel Pink, born in Hobart in 1884. Olive Pink was a skilled botanical artist and an anthropologist. The development of the garden came about as a result of her lobbying for a flora reserve in Alice Springs. The Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve was gazetted in 1956, and Ms Pink was appointed as its first honorary curator. The reserve, renamed the Olive Pink Botanic Garden in 1996, was the first arid zone gardens in the southern hemisphere.