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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-05-17 Daily Xml
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Botanic Gardens of South Australia

The Hon. T.T. NGO (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation. Will the minister tell the chamber of some of the recent initiatives funded by the Botanic Gardens and how these are having a positive effect on visitor numbers and interest in the gardens?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:55): I thank the honourable member for his very important question. It is worth reminding everyone in this place about how fortunate we are to have the Adelaide Botanic Garden and the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden at our doorstep. It is easy to take these beautiful open spaces—

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink: You wanted to sell them. You were going to sell them a few years ago.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Hon. Michelle Lensink is enjoying her return to the chamber, Mr President, but unfortunately the information she is trying to provide is completely wrong. She might be referring back to a former Liberal plan. We will allow her that lapse. It is easy to take these beautiful open spaces for granted because they are such an integral part of our cityscape. I would like to take a moment to talk about these important institutions and the fantastic work that the staff at our gardens have been doing to promote them, both locally and internationally, and ensure that they offer something for everyone.

The Adelaide Botanic Garden attracts, I am told, around 1.5 million visitors each year and is constantly ranked as one of the top tourist attractions on sites such as TripAdvisor. The staff at the gardens do not just sit on their laurels—that was a botanic joke—they are constantly exploring new ways to engage people in the gardens; for example, their outstanding use of social media. This was evident in the fantastic reaction to the blossoming of the titan arum, or so called corpse flower. This is a rare plant that is apparently threatened by deforestation in the wild. It is also notoriously difficult to cultivate. It takes about 10 years, I am advised, to flower from seed and then blooms for only 48 hours, or thereabouts.

More than 16,000 people, I am advised, queued to view and smell the flower at the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden in December and the Adelaide Botanic Garden in February. A time-lapse video of the Mount Lofty flower had been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube, I am advised, while the gardens' website has increased its traffic by 50 per cent since December. There could be more international profile to come, with the gardens working to propagate many more of these rare plants.

Social media also played an important role in the record-breaking crowds that have flocked to see the stunning autumn colours at the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden this year. More than 10,000 visitors, I am advised, came to the gardens over 16 to 17 April. That's more than double the visits from the previous weekend. The significant increase in visitation is likely due to a post on the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden's Facebook page featuring images of the autumn colours photographed and shot by talented visitors. These reached more than 220,000 people and were shared almost 1,500 times in just a few days.

To accommodate the crowds, the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden not only extended opening hours but also set up two free shuttle bus loop services operating every 30 minutes to alleviate traffic and parking congestion. In addition to these achievements, the Botanic Gardens staff found time to host the inaugural Heirloom Weekend on Saturday 9 April and Sunday 10 April in collaboration with the Diggers Club, and this was a well-visited free event featuring displays, workshops, live music, farmers market stalls and children's activities.

They also held the National Rose Trial Garden—People's Choice Weekend, a popular event where the public gets to vote for their favourite new variety of rose which is growing in the National Rose Trial Garden. This year's event was the most successful yet, attracting 1,204 voters, a record number of votes since the event began and almost double what they received in 2015. The winning rose was bred by Roses Guillot in France and submitted by local agent Knight's Roses of Gawler.

In April the Adelaide Botanic Garden began its series of masterclasses covering a variety of topics, including plant propagation, the art of bonsai, developing and cooking with a veggie garden, and pruning for fruit. The full 2016 program of masterclasses is available on the Botanic Gardens of South Australia website. I urge people to take a look, but be quick, they are very popular and spaces are filling fast, I am told.

The Botanic Garden continues its highly successful Little Sprouts Kitchen Garden program to encourage a whole new generation of gardening enthusiasts. I understand that the program is fully booked for terms 1 and 2 in 2016, with a total of 3,500 children booked in for the 2016 calendar year. In addition to these activities, the State Herbarium of South Australia is the key centre for knowledge and information on South Australia's native and naturalised plants, algae, fungi and lichens, and we are internationally recognised for our research and advisory role in plant systematics.

The State Herbarium of South Australia has an ongoing association with several French herbaria as part of the international network of institutions that curate herbarium collections, including in Paris, Nice and Montpellier, as well as the herbarium in New Caledonia. Our plant specimens are sent to French herbaria as duplicate material and to be included in their collections as part of an international program to share natural history collections.

The herbarium collection in Paris is particularly important in the history of early European exploration of scientific endeavour of Australia, I am advised. There were many specimens collected during the Baudin expedition, for example, which took place at the same time that Matthew Flinders was exploring our coastline, and resulted in one of the first European collections of plant and animal specimens for southern Australia. Because these collections are held at the Herbier National de Paris, one of our honorary researchers is visiting the Paris herbarium this month to observe the specimens and further her research of the discovery of a new species of grass collected in western South Australia.

The range of activities, programs and events being run by the Botanic Gardens is incredibly impressive. It is particularly wonderful that they continue to explore new ways to get people excited about visiting these beautiful gardens. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and sincerely thank the staff at the Adelaide Botanic Garden for their fantastic efforts and their dedication.

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