Category: botanic garden

Tea, thatch and early spring

Posted on by andy.winfield

Today as I write this the sun is shining, the birds are in full voice singing, cawing and screeching around the Garden. Bulbs are popping up, crocus are the first with daffodils a week away from carpeting the ground with yellow. Primroses are dotting grassy areas and bees are beginning to forage in the middle of the day; the minimum temperature that a bee can fly is said to be 13 degrees, so when you see one out and about you know the season is changing. In February in this part of the UK we get an extra two and a half minutes of light every day; after February and through March to June it is only two minutes. This is why a lot seems to change in February in the Garden, it is a conduit for spring; the end of January is incomparable to the beginning of March in terms of light, flower and the beginnings of warmth. We’ll still get ice, cold, wet and maybe even snow again between now and summer, but days like this make us feel that winter is nearly behind us.

Crocus appearing in the Garden.

In the Garden there are exciting changes happening. Our South African display has had the framework of a traditional African roundhouse present for much of last year; as I write this it is being thatched with a South African reed called Cape thatching reed; Thamnochortus insignis, the building will then be rendered in a red cob. These features are important for bringing context to the plants around it, being a talking point and attracting people to the Garden where they can leave with maybe a lot, maybe a little, but some new knowledge of the plant world that they didn’t have before.

Lu Yu.

Another development is our Chinese tea plantation. Yes, a tea plantation here in Bristol, just a small one but a tea plantation none the less. When landscaping the area where we’ll grow tea, visitors ask what I’m doing and seem intrigued and interested with the response. Tea is something that is in the heart of UK people, many conversations, moments of relaxation, tears and laughter have happened over a cup of tea and many millions of hands have been warmed on a mug during winter. In China tea drinking dates back 5000 years. Legend has it that Emporer Shen Nung was boiling water when leaves from a wild tree blew into his pot; he was so interested in the aroma that he drank some. He named the brew ch’a, meaning to check or investigate. Tea became integral to the culture of China when Lu Yu, a Chinese scholar, dedicated his life to the study of tea; he wrote a treatise called ‘ The Classic of Tea’ in 760CE, the earliest work dedicated to tea. Today every Chinese household will have tea brewing sets and use tea brewing as a form of welcome, celebration, in family gatherings or to apologise. We’re looking forward to planting our fifteen (so far) Camelia sinensis plants; they should be in the ground by March, which, coincidentally, is when our refreshments open again after the winter…

We look forward to seeing you in the Garden, keep your eyes on the ground and enjoy early spring!

Plant blindness

Posted on by andy.winfield

You may or may not of heard of the term ‘plant blindness’; it’s a phrase that we in the Botanic Garden have been hearing much more of in recent years and will continue to throw around in the future. It refers to the slow shutting off of plant knowledge from generation to generation resulting in an inability to acknowledge plants around us. The simple things that were once common knowledge, such as dock leaves used for nettle stings are becoming bred out of a collective instinct and plants are becoming irrelevant and annoying green things to many people.
I can remember when my eyes were truly opened. I noticed trees that I hadn’t before; as I walked along the street I started looking at the borders and the hanging foliage all around me. Before, I’m not sure what I looked out for in the streets, the pavement or the shops, who knows, but plants for sure changed my life and I see them changing the lives around me at the Botanic Garden. I think I could live to be three hundred and still find something in the plant world that fascinated me. This week I learnt about the incredible relationships between some species of orchid and ants. The ants don’t pollinate the orchid flower but hang around the plant living off an ‘extrafloral’ nectar secreted elsewhere; they then do everything to protect their food source and keep the plant safe. Plants and animals have these delicate relationships that allow both to flourish, and it’s fair to say that ours has become less delicate over the years.
Dandelion seed head
This change in the collective instinct of people has come about through successive generations becoming more urbanised with less plant interaction such as blowing a dandelion seed head, throwing a grass seed dart, eating wild blackberries or sticking cleavers to jumpers; children still do this but there are many who don’t and lose a connection with the plant world. The result of this is that education reduces the amount of plant learning, and in biology courses there is a main focus on the animal kingdom; there is a perceived lack of interest in the plant world. Things have become so bad that the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed words like ‘acorn’ and ‘buttercup’ preferring instead ‘broadband’ and ‘cut and paste’; they were seen as no longer relevant to a child’s life.
University of Bristol Botanic Garden
There is however, a great appetite among young people to be green, to recycle and mend the excesses of the generations that went before them; often students tell me it’s the biggest issue for them and they’d like to make a difference. How is a difference made? I think we can all make a simple difference by introducing plants to friends and relatives, opening eyes to the trees and weeds and the force of life going on around us and under our feet. It could be argued that many of the world’s problems can be solved with plants; forests, food, habitats are all areas that need experts, and while there are many graduates of zoology degrees there are few from plant sciences. This is changing with Universities now offering full plant science degrees; there are many jobs in plant sciences as governments and companies are beginning to see how important it is. Bristol University is launching a plant science degree starting in September 2019 based in the magnificent Life Sciences building with a group of world experts in the field of plant science. Of course, undergraduates will use the Botanic Garden as a second home and have access to all our knowledge and experience, we’re really looking forward to it. If you, a relative, son or daughter are interested click here to view the degree.
We all have a role to play in protecting our relationship with the natural world which can be played by simply talking about the plants we see to people. I’m always disposed to optimism and today’s

young people seem to be committed to green ways; this problem arose through successive generations and perhaps it can be cured in the same way, the passing down of knowledge as we go.

By Andy Winfield

The Impossible Garden

Posted on by andy.winfield

We’ve always felt that art and the Garden work well together. Every Easter we run a sculpture exhibition which brings this home, plants and art are good friends; nature’s sculpture makes the Garden a gallery and placing human art amongst it embellishes both. With this in mind, for some time we’ve wanted to show a permanent summer exhibition but nothing has fit the bill.
Luke Jerram on one of his exhibits.

Step in Luke Jerram this year. If art and plants are good friends, so are Luke and Bristol; he has created a perfect replica of the moonwhich is floating at various locations around the world at the moment; he created a giant water slide down one of Bristol’s busiest shopping streets for one day in 2014, a day that brought the city together, everyone was smiling; he also positioned pianos around the city for anyone to play, I’d love walking home from work to hear music drifting along the street. As you can see Luke is very much a force for good in the city, and unknown to us was regularly visiting the Garden with his family. So, when he contacted us to ask if it was ok to display The Impossible Garden here we took five seconds before nodding vigorously, yes please!

The exhibition sits well in the Garden and is the outcome of a residency at the Bristol Vision Institute (BVI); Luke is colour-blind and wanted to explore the processes and limitations of vision. With the help of Bristol University BVI researchers and the Bristol Eye Hospital he spent time with visually impaired children to help him understand. The result is a series of exhibits that are fun yet also thought provoking, making you question how you perceive objects, colours, reflections and patterns.

One thing that highlights the diversity of exhibits is that every member of the Botanic team has a different favourite showing that we all observe things in a different way from each other.
I think this is one of the best events we’ve had here at the Botanic Garden; it’s a real pleasure to see visitors ‘getting’ the exhibition, from youngsters to their grandparents. Everyone sits on the oversized picnic bench, peeps into the infinite pool, tries the door to nowhere and sits on the glitchy park bench.
It looks like Luke has nailed another one.
The exhibition runs throughout the summer and the Garden is open for seven days a week from 10 until 4:30; see you here!

Andy Winfield

Native American foods

Posted on by andy.winfield
By Claire Cope

Having worked as a trainee at the Botanic Garden for nearly two years I am now coming to the end of my time with the garden. I have learned more than I thought possible to learn in just two years, have gained my RHS qualifications, have had the opportunity to work with an amazing range of plants and have acquired a huge amount of practical horticultural experience. Best of all, I have had the opportunity to work alongside some very wonderful people who have shared their knowledge and passion with me and have made me feel very welcomed into this beautiful community. 


In terms of my horticultural work here at the garden, my favourite part of this last year has been my project to work on the Native American Vegetable display. This included everything from designing the planting lay out, propagating and maintaining the plants, through to harvesting the food and collecting the seeds. Therefore, for this article I want to share with you some of the fascinating information I’ve learnt about this amazing group of plants.

Firstly, I had no idea that so much of our food originated in South America and has

Squash originated in South America and was one
of the ‘three sisters’.

been being cultivated for so many years. Many plants that today we consider as staples such as tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, squash, and peppers were originally cultivated thousands of years ago by native civilisations such as the Inca, Maya and Aztec peoples.


In North and Central America, prior to the European invasions, it was the three crops – Sweetcorn, Beans and Squash that formed the foundation of sustainable subsistence agriculture.  These crops became known as ‘The Three Sisters’ and were grown as companion plants where the tall stems of the sweetcorn support the climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen into the soil to feed the hungry squash which in turn provides a living mulch to suppress weeds and shade the ground for the corn. Unfortunately, due to the differences in climate and the need to protect the corn from the badgers, we weren’t able to replicate this exactly but I made these three plants the centre of the display in order to tell the story of the three sisters and to show how these ancient cultures had devised methods to work with the plants and with natural systems to increase productivity …. Unfortunately, the pesky squirrels feasted on all of our tasty corn kernels but we did get some lovely large squash and lots of purple beans!

Quinoa
The next thing that I found exciting to grow was the more unusual range of plants that were grown in cultivation so long ago but are only just coming into popularity now such as Quinoa. This plant is grown for its grain which is high in protein and was originally domesticated by the Andean people over 3000 years ago! The Incas held this crop as sacred and referred to it as chisoya mama meaning ‘mother of all grains’. We grew two different cultivars of Chenopodium quinoa – The first ’Quinoa’ was the more common form and the second ‘Huauzontle’ is the lesser known and is primarily grown for the immature seed-heads which can be eaten as a vegetable like broccoli. This form grew extremely tall and bushy and by October it was looking very beautiful with its pink- burgundy seed heads.   

There were also plants in this display that were more unusual and some I hadn’t heard

Cyclanthera pedata

of before which have the potential to be incorporated into western food production in the future. For instance – I really enjoyed growing the Cyclanthera pedata ‘Fat Baby’ and ‘Bolivian Giant’. These were vigorous climbers which produced very strange spikey green fruits which tasted just like a cucumber!


Then there were plants that I had always considered as ornamentals which I can now look at in a new light – such as the Dahlias with their edible tubers, Lupins with their edible beans and Nasturtium with edible leaves and flowers.

Some of the cultivars chosen for the display had really interesting stories – for example the beans we grew, Phaseolus vulgaris ’Cherokee trail of tears’, were originally from the native American Cherokee people who were driven out of their homelands by European settlers – a forced march know as ‘Trail of Tears’. This bean was one of their heirlooms which has been passed from generation to generation ever since.


We are now coming to the end of the season and soon the bed will be nearly empty again and ready for the next trainee to start all over again! What a great project to have been given, I have learnt so much and hope that those of you who saw it enjoyed the display!

The Garden blog

Posted on by andy.winfield
By Andy Winfield
Here at the Botanic Garden we’ve decided to take a slight change of direction on the blog; while there will still be science based items, there will be much more about the day to day running of the Garden and various experiences of the small team who work here. There may be items from volunteers or staff and the subject matter will be diverse, you will be surprised at the areas of life plants take us.
First, an introduction; I’m Andy, a career change, I’d done this and that, warehouse work to office
Before and after, marking out the Phylogeny display in
February 2006; below, as it is today.

work ending as a Costs Draftsman for a Bristol Law firm. It was at this point I considered my future working life stretching ahead and didn’t like it; and so I shifted direction and embarked on a career in horticulture. This was a good move! After a two-year course I landed a job at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden, this was 2001 and the little-known Garden was tucked away in woods beyond Bristol’s famous suspension bridge spanning the Avon Gorge. The gardening was good and the range of plants we dealt with inspiring; we held large plant sales that kept the Garden afloat and paid my wages.

After a few years the University began a process which considered its outlying properties and decided to sell the site of the Botanic Garden and move the whole lot to a new location. Without going into too much depth about how to firstly move a 5,000 species plant collection and secondly simultaneously design, landscape and create a new Botanic Garden using these plants, trust me when I say it was quite an experience. I feel very privileged to have been a part of the process and one of a small dynamic team that is still together today driving the Garden onto the next phase and the next. The team is buoyed by many incredible volunteers bringing a multitude of skills with them; they are a very inspiring bunch! We’re a small staff team and so must diversify into many different areas; I’m still primarily a gardener but I also manage our website and social media, organise a few events and influence our events theme. This year all our events were based around bees and pollinators due to interest from followers and likers of our social media.
The new cone of the cycad
Encephartos ferox emerging.
While it was difficult to leave the old site, the Botanic Garden a decade later is a vibrant hub of horticulture and science with each week bringing something new, and it is these things we’ll be telling you about in the blog.
Musa basjoo, the Japanese banana
wrapped up for six months of winter
This week in the Garden has been all about protecting plants from the impending winter. Our reserve glasshouse space fills up quickly as we bring in pots and dig up plants more used to a warmer latitude. The biggest of these are cycads, plants with a long fossil history, a weighty woody crown and argumentative spines. They always lash out when we take them in and leave their mark, but they’re wonderful plants and they’ve been in the family for a long time and on the planet much longer than us, so we let them off; this year two plants are producing magnificent orange cones which will become a great feature for visitors next year.
Plants that can’t be moved inside are wrapped up and protected with bark, straw and constructions that will protect them from cold, wet and wind that we’ll all experience. It’s a poignant time when we say goodbye to them for the season, the beginning of the darker days of winter. While dark, the winter days are far from being a chore, I enjoy them as much as summer. Plants are structural and still, where there is flower it is fragrant and small, and, while the maintenance is less, we’re able to get on with more landscaping jobs which make big changes in the Garden. This winter a South African mud hut or Rondavel will be built in the South African display, and a peony garden constructed in the Traditional Chinese medicinal display, more on that another time.
21st century pruning…
Also, this week we’ve launched ourselves into the 21stcentury and are trying out a MEWP (Mobile Elevated Work Platform), also known as a cherry picker. Our Wisteria, Magnolia and Roses which grow on the wall of the 18thcentury house are getting harder to prune from a ladder, so we felt it was time for machinery. It all worked very well (although quite high up!) and will do for us until someone invents a jet pack, which as gardeners, we’re all looking forward to.

All of this work is worth it when you hear and see the enjoyment from visitors. Our aim is for a visitor to leave the Garden with a greater understanding of the role plants play in their lives and ultimately, as a result of this, a greater respect for the planet. Lofty aims, but every little bit helps.

The new Australian display

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Helen Roberts

The newly established Australian display is thriving at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden. This new area has been developed over the last year few years with the aim of introducing visitors to the captivating flora from the Mediterranean climatic region of Western and Southern Australia. The new display is part of the strategic plan for the Garden and follows on from the creation of the Mediterranean and southwest South Africa zones (N Wray 2017, personal communication, 27th July). 
The Australian display still under development
at the Botanic Garden.
This display aims to broadly showcase some of the hardier plants of Western and Southern Australia but also concentrates on the highly diverse flora of the “Kwongan“, one of a number of special habitats that make up the Southwest Australia ecoregion. This ecoregion is acknowledged worldwide as one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots. 
Kwongan is the aboriginal term used for the mixed waxy leaved shrubland and heathland assemblage found in the southwest of Western Australia and South Australia around Adelaide. The Kwongan is comparable to the other types of shrubland and heathlands plant communities with a Mediterranean climate, such as South Africa’s fynbos, California’s chaparral, France’s maquis and Chile’s matorral. The Kwongan sandy soils are impoverished of nutrients and the climate, with its winter rain and summer droughts, has meant plants have evolved some extraordinary adaptations and survival tricks to cope with the difficult conditions. Theses plant communities display high levels of species diversity and a number of rare species not found anywhere else. 
There are many important plant families that make up the Kwongan, including the eucalyptus tree species from the myrtle family (Myrtaceae). However, the aim of the display is not to create a landscape dominated by these trees but to highlight some of the fascinating shrubs and subshrubs. A small winding path enables visitors to get up close and personal to some of these plants and be immersed in the wonderful fragrance emitted from the vegetation. Firstly, the Callistemon (bottle brushes) were planted from the Myrtaceae family, including the weeping bottle brush (Callistemon viminalis), a beautiful arching shrub with deep red bottle brush flowers. The name refers to the beautiful flowers, ‘calli’ coming from the Greek word meaning beautiful and ‘stemon’ meaning stamen, the male part of a flower. 
Banksia in bloom.
Photo credit: Shannon Martin
via Flickr [CC by 2.0]
The other important families for this display include the unusual plant family called the Proteaceae, which contains Banksia, Dryandra, Hakea, Isopogon and Grevillea. Many of these species are only found in the Mediterranean climatic region of Western and Southern Australia. All have exquisitely striking flowers and sculptural foliage. The Banksias are particularly interesting though. The flower heads are composed of hundreds of tiny flowers ranging in colour from yellow through to red. The fruits look like cones, with the seed encased to protect against seed eaters. These cone-like structures are what is termed serotinous where seed is let loose in response to an environmental trigger, which in Banksia’s case is fire or extreme drought. 
Other beautiful flowering shrubs that have been included in this attractive display are the kangaroo paws, Anigozanthos, whose flowers do vaguely resemble the paws of marsupials. The flowers themselves are vibrant and extremely eye-catching, held up on long tall stems to be pollinated by birds. The flower is arranged so that pollen is deposited on the heads of nectar feeding birds, with different Anigozanthos species leaving pollen on different parts of the birds’ head.
This new display has been intentionally placed adjacent to the southwestern South Africa display. The two continents were once connected forming the supercontinent Gondwana some 200 million years ago. In both countries, species from the Proteaceae and Myrtaceae are represented. This area of the garden is set to be further developed through a strategic plan to include five main plant assemblages of the Mediterranean climatic region. Three have now been accomplished. Next to look forward to are the plant assemblages from Central Chile and Western California. 
Helen Roberts is a trained landscape architect with a background in plant sciences. She is a probationary member of the Garden Media Guild and a regular contributor to the University of Bristol Botanic Garden blog.