Archive for category Botanical Garden
Penang Botanical Gardens – Taman Kebun Bunga
Penang Botanical Gardens or fondly refer to as “Waterfall Gardens” was established by the British back in 1884. The garden are bound by evergreen tropical rainforest and divided by a cascading stream and sprawling with 29 hectares of prime and undulating grounds.
The lush greenery gardens are Penangites favorite park and a popular tourist destination. The garden also act as an institute of learning, studying and researching of live specimen both in-situ and ex-situ. Every year, countless groups of undergraduates, students, government agencies and private sectors will come to the gardens to acquire wealth of information and knowledge on aspects of botany and horticulture.
Some of the interesting plant that can be found there includes:
- Cannon-Ball Tree: A beautiful fast growing tree which reaches 25m in height. The leaves have a life span of approximately 6 months after which they are shed rapidly so that the crown is usually bare for a day or two.
- Candle Tree: An evergreen tree with brown trunk and growing up to 6 to 10m. The flowers are big, solitary, bell shape and white in color, measuring 8cm wide.
- Argus Pheasant Tree: A tall deciduous tree reaching 31m in height with rounded crown and strong buttressed trunk when old.
- Ebony Tree: An evergreen, stout and shady wide spreading tree with dense dark green glossy leaves. It has a compact, dome shaped conical crown.
Besides being a botanic centre, the garden is a popular recreational spot. Some of the recreational activities include jogging, walking, jungle trekking and aerobics. Read the rest of this entry »
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How to Make Your Yard Look Like a Botanical Garden
So you want to know how to build a botanical garden in your yard?
Before you start digging carefully consider what you really want from the garden. You may soon discover that an average size garden cannot easily provide the requirements for a botanical garden.
Why?
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The Volcano at the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens
The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne (RBG) has a secret and it has been hidden in the southeast corner for over 100 years, behind a screen of nondescript vegetation. Most visitors did not know that behind the trees was a volcano! Of course it is not real, but one William Guilfoyle the second Director of the RBG designed in 1876 as a reservoir to store water for the gardens. It is possible that his influences came from his travels around the South Pacific Islands. The volcano was decommissioned as a working reservoir in the 1950s and the gardens became reliant on mains water.
Andrew Laidlaw, the RBG’s Landscape Architect, is at pains to point out that the redesign of this landscape is not a replica of Guilfoyle’s design but it is the reinterpretation of the volcano concept to try and help address today’s water availability issue. According to Richard Barley, previous Director of the Melbourne Gardens, the volcano holds 1.3ML which is roughly the amount need to complete watering the entire garden. To water the whole garden, it takes several nights to complete.
Solving this huge problem has been divided into three stages. The first stage is to repair the volcano, the second step is to obtain an extra 70 ML of storm-water from surrounding streets and the third step is to investigate the possibility of alternative sources of water to allow the gardens to become independent of mains water. A feasibility study of this third stage is under way.
The first step has started! The site has been cleared and visitors can now see the volcano. It sits at the highest point of the site near Anderson Street and the lawns around it represent lava flows and the garden beds the land masses. The rockery garden beds are meant to look like rocks thrown out by the volcano. The site has a mannerist feel to the design. Mannerism is a 15th century use of devises to scare, cause surprise or alarm. Read the rest of this entry »
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