Category: people

Students set to tell the story behind the ballast seed collection

Posted on by andy.winfield

Guest post by Rhiannon Williams & Alex Learmont

The seeds of some plants can survive for many years lying dormant, waiting for improved environmental conditions to germinate. Seeds can withstand extreme drought or cold; some dry seeds can be stored at -150 degrees Celsius without harm, and still be induced to germinate!  Some seeds can be transported around the globe in the hulls of ships, immune to the storms and scurvy, only to one day be dumped on the banks of a foreign river, which may or may not provide the conditions it needs to grow and flourish.

We are biology students at the University of Bristol and for our dissertation we are creating interpretation boards for one of the Botanic Garden’s newer collections – the ballast seed collection. Our boards will be displayed at the Botanic Garden next to the ballast seed flower bed, which can be found near the glasshouses. This summer, once the flower bed has been planted up, it will be a joy to come and visit.

Alex Learmont and Rhiannon Williams are
preparing interpretation boards and
other materials on the ballast seed project
as part of their dissertation.
Our aim is to provide visitors of the gardens and the public with accessible and interesting information about the ballast seed project and the plants found within the collection. In addition to the interpretation boards, we are making A4 cards with information for each plant species and leaflets that will be available at the Garden and on tours of the floating garden at the harbourside. Visitors will even be able to scan QR codes placed beside some of the plants with their smartphones and access informative websites for some of the species. This collection is unique to the Botanic Garden and we’re looking forward to telling the remarkable story behind it.

The project began as part of the ‘Port City’ exhibition at the Arnolfini

The ‘Seeds of Change’ project is an on-going exploration of the ballast flora of European port cities by the artist Maria Thereza-Alves. Empty or lightly loaded ships carry low-value materials such as earth, stones and gravel, or sea water as ballast to weigh them down, giving improved manoeuvrability and stability. This ballast was emptied into the river Avon and onto ballast dumps that used to be present around Bristol. For centuries, exotic plant species have been transported to Bristol in the ballast of trading ships coming from countries all over the world.

The project began in 2007 as a part of the international Arnolfini exhibition entitled ‘Port City’ and was part of the London 2012 Festival. With the help of Botanic Garden curator Nick Wray, a list was composed of exotic plants found growing on ballast dumps throughout the UK, including the local port of Avonmouth. The full collection of these seeds was germinated in the University of Bristol Botanic Garden. Then with the support of the Arnolfini, the Botanic Garden and Bristol City Council, designer Gitta Gschwendtner used a condensed version of this collection to transform a disused grain barge on Bristol’s floating harbour into a ballast seed garden.

The floating garden can be viewed from Castle Park, but visitors can only reach it by boat. The next set of boat tours begin this spring. For a small fare, visitors can book onto them through the Arnolfini. Some of the tours focus particularly on the design and artistic concepts of the project whereas others are aimed more at those with a botanical interest. For example, last summer a micro-sound tour allowed visitors to listen to the sounds of plants growing.

Exotic plants reflect Bristol’s rich maritime history

The idea behind the project was to draw links between Bristol’s floral history and the social and economic history of Bristol’s trading past. Human dispersal of plants often follows routes of transportation, and the ballast of ships was a route into Bristol for invasive plant species. Some of the plants are native to the Mediterranean, West Asia, North Africa, and even South America. Ships would have been trading back and forth to these places over the past few hundred years. The plants in the collection convey a living history of Bristol’s rich maritime past.

Relatively few seeds in the ships ballast would have survived the long sea journeys, but some were able to germinate or lie dormant in the ballast dumps around Bristol for many years. In the late 1800s ballast became a more important aid to invasion when the new generation of metal ships changed from solid to liquid ballast. Ballast water can contain hundreds of species including bacterial, microbes, small invertebrates and seeds. Now, ballast is a major source of invasive species to port’s and in coastal freshwater and marine ecosystems. The International MaritimeOrganization (IMO) has developed a Convention aimed at preventing these harmful effects, this involves “Ballast water exchange”. The water taken up at the port of departure is replaced during the voyage with water from the deep sea. The organisms in the deep sea water are far less likely to survive when the water is discharged at the port of arrival, hence reducing the impact of invasive species in ballast water.

Most exotic seeds never establish themselves

In 1996, Williamson and Fitter proposed a ‘tens rule’. The rule states that only 10% of non-native species imported into a region will appear in the wild. Of these, only 10% will become established, and 10% of the establishing species may become invasive. Therefore, only 1 in a thousand imported species will cause problems.

An important message the ballast seed garden conveys is that most non-native flora does not become established or invasive. Even if the plants survived the long journey, the environment where they were unloaded from the ships (such as a ballast dump) was likely to be unsuitable for growth, or the number of plants of the same species was too small to result in a viable breeding population. However, some of the species on the ballast seed display are capable of survival and reproduction in the wild. Many of these naturalized species exist alongside British flora causing no obvious damage to habitats and ecosystems.  The Garden promotes the idea for multihorticulturalism: the view that migrations of species are natural and trying to stop them is futile.

New projects bring ‘Seeds of Change’ to schools and communities

During spring and summer 2013 a new project, “Seeds of Change: Growing a Living History of Bristol”, will provide the opportunity for Bristol schools and community groups to grow ballast seed gardens of their own. The project was set up by The University of Bristol Centre for Public Engagement and the Botanic Garden in partnership with the Arnolfini, and with funding provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Academics, artists and student volunteers from the university will be working together to lead a programme of activities and workshops exploring themes of history, botany and art; making the original themes of the “Seeds of Change” project exciting and accessible to school children and community groups.

For more information on the Heritage Lottery Funded schools and community programme you can visit the University website: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/public-engagement/events/seeds-of-change/or contact Martha Crean by email: martha.crean@bristol.ac.uk or phone: 0117 3318313.

Volunteers in the spotlight

Posted on by andy.winfield

This is my first day visiting the garden on a Tuesday. It’s a whole new set of faces around the coffee table as each day of the week brings with it a new set of volunteer gardeners at the Botanic Garden.  I’ve brought some home-made cookies – a sort of bribe or peace offering I suppose. You see, I want to drag a few of these lovely volunteers away from their work for a few minutes to ask them about what motivates them to keep coming back to the garden, donating their precious time, week after week, year after year.
Colin Bolton has been a volunteer gardener for nearly
ten years.

After some discussion around the coffee table, Colin Bolton becomes my first volunteer interviewee. I’m not entirely sure he has actually volunteered himself…it rather seems that his fellow volunteers around the table have ‘volunteered’ him. He’s willing to go with the flow though.

Colin has been a volunteer gardener at the Botanic Garden for nearly ten years, coming in one morning a week. He is a chemist by training and is a retired lecturer from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Medicine. He heard about the opportunity to volunteer through his son Mark Bolton, who is a well-known garden and flower photographer and has worked with a number of people in the Botanic Garden for various projects. Colin thought he would give volunteer gardening a go.
However, immediately before he was about to start, Colin was struck with meningitis and was very seriously ill in hospital for about six weeks.
“The medical staff were amazed that I came out of hospital, I was so ill,” Colin tells me. “I began volunteering for the garden right after that as a bit of therapy.”
For Colin, it seems to be the people in the Garden that he works with that have kept him coming back all these years.
“They are such nice people to work with and it’s lovely to work with people who know what they’re doing. They’re good teachers and everyone is very friendly, right from Nick [the curator] downwards.”
Colin began volunteering a couple of years before the Garden moved locations and he recalls the move well.
“The move was quite a performance…moving so many plants that were really well established. I can still remember seeing Andy digging around the roots of a really well established tree. He was digging down six feet and across just as much.”
When I ask him whether he was a big gardener before volunteering here, Colin tells me that he and his wife do have a fair size garden at home. He claims that his wife is really the creative genius in their own garden though. Then with a smile on his face, he describes his role as the unpaid labourer.
Judith Moore (second from the left) started her own
gardening business after she became a
volunteer gardener.
Next, I head off to find Judith Moore. She is sweeping leaves with a few of the other volunteer gardeners, Judy, Zaria and Marion, and I can hear the laughter and chatter long before I spot them.
Judith began volunteering as a gardener just after the garden had moved. She was a social worker and found herself between jobs and looking for something to do. Having visited the Garden at the old site quite a lot, Judith felt quite an attachment to it. She had always had an interest in gardening, so she began volunteering one morning a week. That was over seven years ago.
Volunteering in the Garden inspired Judith to start her own business and become a self-employed gardener, which she’s been doing now for about six years.
“I’d never thought about doing paid work as a gardener, but being here made me think about it. It just made me think, ‘well yeah, I could do this’. So I did.”
Judith completed horticulture training courses through the Royal Horticultural Society at the Botanic Garden and spoke to me about many of the other benefits she receives being a volunteer gardener: “It’s a fantastic network here. [The Botanic Garden] is a source of lots of things – information and ideas, but also work.”
People often phone the Botanic Garden inquiring about gardeners and they refer them to Judith. She’s acquired two of her clients this way. But, it’s more than this that has kept Judith coming back over the years.
“I’m sure everyone will say this to you, but the paid gardeners here are such nice people. Day to day it is just such a pleasant environment to be in, but also you feel that they’re all very supportive of us.”
When I point out that Judith’s volunteering commitment means hours that she can’t put toward building her business and her paid work, she simply replies, “I think that highlights how good it is coming here, because I really didn’t want to stop this connection. It sort of feeds you.” 
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Iris unguicularis in bloom in the garden on January 15th.
Before I leave, I take a whirl around the garden to see what’s going on. There are some irises in bloom, which offer a beautiful splash of colour against the winter back drop and I stop to take a photograph. I run into Martin Webb who is working hard. Martin and his wife Carole started volunteering with the Botanic Garden about seven years ago, when it moved to its current location. Like many of the volunteers, Martin and Carole span the different groups of volunteers and are volunteer gardeners, volunteer guides and are also very involved with The Friends.
“ We’ve seen the garden grow up in this location,” says Martin, “which means that from a gardening point of view you feel as though you own a little bit of it because you can say, ‘I did that’ or ‘I helped with this’. It also helps with the guiding because when people ask questions you can tell them an anecdote because you know where things have come from and how things used to look before.”
Martin immediately slips into his role as a guide without knowing it and points to an area beyond where we’re standing and starts drawing upon his anecdotes: “When we first came, all of this wasn’t planted and you had to take your cue from Nick, who painted a picture of what things were going to look like and then we had to try and see what he was seeing.”
Martin enjoys being on the interface between the garden and those who come to take pleasure in it. He and Carole both give tours for both adults and children and he spends some time telling me about how touring children about the garden requires completely different techniques.
“You get them to pick up a few leaves and have a look at them – some are glossy, some are prickly, some are waxy, some are furry – and you get them to have a feel. We talk about why the leaves are different and we basically have a mini botany lesson.”
Martin Webb is both a volunteer gardener
and a volunteer guide.
Martin says that the worst fear among the volunteer guides is that they will be asked a question they can’t answer. However, he claims that almost never happens.
“Even if they’re a very well informed group, you can always explain things in the context of this garden and what’s going on here. A good disclaimer is to just say up front that you are a keen amateur and encourage others within the group that might be more knowledgeable about specific areas to speak up and share their knowledge.
“In the end, you usually come off a tour on a bit of a high because you feel as though people have appreciated it, asked good questions and learned something.”
Martin and Carole decided to start volunteering after they retired. They were looking for something to do together and they were both interested in gardening and seven years later they are both very involved volunteers at the Garden. Martin pauses just long enough for me to take a picture of him in the winter sunshine before heading back to work.
So there you have it – a few of the stories behind the volunteers who are so integral to the Botanic Garden. I’m sure that every volunteer at the garden has a different reason for why they started volunteering and a unique motivation that keeps them coming back. However, as an observer, watching them work away on a cold winter day, I can safely say that all the volunteers look happy doing what they’re doing. And quite frankly, there’s a lot to be said about being somewhere that brings you happiness.   

Love, hard work and a lot of volunteers…that’s what makes the garden grow

Posted on by andy.winfield

Two weeks ago when I was at the Botanic Garden learning about the tremendous amount of work involved in putting the garden to bed, I was invited to join the team for morning tea. Of course, I leaped at the opportunity to warm my hands and to meet some of the other staff and volunteers. It was a Friday and there were about 8 or 9 of us sitting around the table. After introductions were done it took no time at all for the conversation to return to a friendly banter that put me in mind of a family gathering. It was all very insightful. There was talk of books, movies, a case of being mistaken for a celebrity, the perils of driving an E-Type Jag with a heavy foot, and cakes…there was lots of talk about cakes. You see, it would seem that as well as all the other things the volunteers do at the Botanic Garden, many of them can also bake a mean cake.
Volunteers helping at a fundraising event.

However, one of the most interesting things I learned that day was that some volunteers have been with the University of Bristol Botanic Garden for more than 20 years. That’s an impressive retention rate even for paid staff, let alone volunteers. I had to find out more about the role of volunteers in the Garden and the ethos that manages to cultivate such loyalty.

First, some history…
Volunteers have been a part of the culture of the Botanic Garden for a very long time. There’s photographic evidence of their role dating back to 1970 and when curator Nick Wray joined the garden permanently in 1984 there were a handful of volunteers.
However, in 2002, when it became clear that the garden was going to move location, the volunteer numbers grew dramatically.
“We needed to increase the number of people to help us prepare for the move,” said Nick, “to propagate plants, lift and care for plants. It was clear to me that we were going to end up with thousands and thousands of plants in pots, bags and sacks. Just the shear job of watering in dry weather was going to take a vast amount of time.”
So, with one advertisement in the Friends of the Botanic Garden newsletter, the volunteer numbers grew from a dozen to twenty-one.  Those volunteer gardeners assisted with the preparation of the move as well as carrying out the move itself. It was four years of preparation and eight months of driving back and forth between the two sites to move 12,500 plants, all during a drought year. Volunteers supported all of it.
Volunteers planting on the ballast seed garden barge.
Where are we today?
Today, volunteers at the Garden take on any number of roles and often multiple roles, though gardening is still the most popular. There are currently between 41 and 43 volunteer gardeners working each week, which will probably drop to about 35 in the depth of winter. However, by next Easter there will be a four month waiting list of ready and eager volunteer gardeners, looking for the opportunity to get their hands dirty.
Besides volunteer gardeners there are about 30 volunteer guides who have completed a 10-session training program, which gives them the knowledge and confidence to guide groups around the garden. This training alternates each year and so the Garden will be recruiting and training a new set of volunteer guides in 2013.
There’s also a dedicated group of volunteers that welcome visitors to the Garden. They run the welcome lodge where they hand out leaflets, let people know what’s going on, what’s relevant for their visit in the garden that day and collect the small administration fee. They are on the front-line if you will and are the friendly faces that welcome and point people in the right direction at events throughout the year. There are about 35 people on the welcome lodge roster. 
So, by my count that makes over 100 volunteers and I haven’t even mentioned the volunteers that help in the office, mail out newsletters, distribute leaflets through doors, fundraise, work on plant records, tweet on Twitter…the list goes on!  Whatever the exact number, it is certainly more than a handful. 
To provide some perspective, there are ten paid employees, which equate to seven full time equivalents at the Botanic Garden. They are vastly outnumbered by their volunteers. This clearly has the potential of being a management nightmare. However, whether it’s the quality of the volunteers, the skills of the staff or some combination of both, it all seems to run very smoothly.
Creating the right culture
From an outsider’s perspective there seems to be a few key ways in which the Garden has created a culture that nurtures the growth and retention of volunteers:
  •          Every job is important – This philosophy seems to be instilled throughout the Garden team. Basically it doesn’t matter what people do, from washing pots to propagating plants, it’s all equally important in the bigger scheme of things because it all needs to get done. This is also reflected in the distribution of work, with everyone having their share of the monotonous as well as the exciting.  
  •            Self-sufficiency and autonomy are supported– Many of the experienced volunteers mentor those that are less experienced. The volunteer guides and welcome lodge volunteers are coordinated by the volunteers themselves, which shifts the responsibility of day-to-day management away from paid staff and gives the volunteers some autonomy as well as additional responsibility.
  •          Confidence is instilled through training – Whether the volunteers are pruning, or touring a group of enthusiastic gardeners about the garden, the staff at the Botanic Garden have put in place practices that give the volunteers the skills they need to be confident in what they do. This also means having the flexibility to let people learn through their own mistakes. Nicola Rathbone, better known as Froggie, manages the volunteer gardeners on a day to day basis and was telling me about her approach to providing instruction on pruning. She gives a summary that makes clear what needs to be done, but with enough flexibility that the volunteers have to exercise their own judgement and creativity, which helps them develop their own skills. She said, “Things always grow back. It’s more important that the volunteers are reassured about what they’re doing.”  
  •          Volunteers are valued – If you read last week’s post you’ll know that Andy Winfield claimed that without volunteers he’d be curled up exhausted in a corner of a mud heap somewhere. This attitude seems to be shared among all the staff I spoke to. Nick said, “They are the life blood of what goes on here. We simply couldn’t operate without them.”  

Why do they keep coming back?
So what keeps someone coming back at their own expense, on their own time, week after week, year after year?  I asked Froggie what she thought kept the volunteers coming back.  Her reply, “It’s a family. The volunteers are part of this big team and we’re all working towards the same goal. The volunteers are amazing and they look after us, as much as we look after them.”
The notion of a team of employees and volunteers being a family is often rhetoric rather than reality. However, sitting around that table for tea, I couldn’t differentiate between staff and volunteer – everyone was equal – and everyone felt like family.
Of course to really understand why people commit so much of their time to volunteering, you really need to ask the volunteers themselves, which I intend to do for my next post. Besides, I need an excuse to go back and try some of those cakes everyone was talking about!
If you are interested in volunteering with the Botanic Garden, please click here, however, be aware that there is already a waiting list for volunteer gardeners.