12/6/13

Weather:
W wind 13kph
rain - 0.0mm
high 13C low 5C

Today we were given a tour of the geographical collection at the botanic gardens.
 The collection is spread of 6ha (100m x 100m is one hectare(ha)) so it contains 60,000msq!!!

The care for this collection is administered by only 1.5 staff members who's time is mostly spent modifying and planting to soil types and gradually bui;lding and refining cohesion within the collection.
To ensure the weeds are kept down they use Round-up liberally as they don't have enough staff to weed by hand.
They also use bulk pea-straw mulch to suppress weeds, hold moisture and slowly release nutrient as it decays.
Some plants have low nutrient needs(many in the Australian and S.African collection) so these are mulched with bark and/or gravel, as bark has almost no nutrient value.
Others such as herbaceous plants have high nutrient needs so these are mulched with compost.
The linear(laid out in a line) border of the geographic collection is an old style design limiting the use of space. It is being slowly updated and changed in shape to offer more room for new plants and greater cohesion within a set theme.
In 1997 rules were applied by the ministry of primary industries to limit and control the number and types of new plants coming into the country. This system helps ensure biological threats are not brought here on imported plants. It now costs $75000 to quarantine and certify any new plant coming into the country, IF the plant itself is not deemed a biological threat/pest.
To maintain such a large collection the curator is constantly propagating  the species within it.
At any one time he is propagating 3000-odd of the 4-5000 species in the collection!
As the collection grows the techniques used to maintain it are modified to allow the same number of staff to complete all necessary tasks.

Interesting Fact: Some plants have evolved in places subjected to many wild-fires. Imported seed from these plants would not germinate successfully until a system of smoke-filtering or infusion was applied. With this "smokifaction" a 90% germination rate was achieved.