Another busy day down under! Today the First Year Fellows visited the spectacular Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, followed by a tour of the Sydney Opera House.
At one of Royal Botanic Garden Sydney’s 15 entrances
RBG Sydney is the largest public garden in the southern hemisphere, with over 4 million visitors annually, and with good reason. These gorgeous grounds are located in the middle of the city center, right on Sydney Harbor.
The Fellows spent the morning meeting with representatives from RBG Sydney, as well as staff from Australian Botanic Garden Mt Annan. It was a great opportunity to hear more about the overall vision of the organizations and get more information about their strategic planning efforts, governance structures and programming. After a delicious lunch at RBG’s café, we strolled around the grounds for a more in depth look at the garden with Paul Nicholson, RBG Site Coordinator of Community Education. Paul has a vast knowledge of plants and the Garden that he generously shared with us.
Paul talks palms
Fellows especially enjoyed the tour of Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters, a display that interprets the Aboriginal cultural heritage of RBG Sydney. The garden is celebrating it’s 200 anniversary, but Aboriginal people have a 40,000 year history with the site, including roughly 28,000 years of managing the land through techniques including burning.
Garden Interpreter Etta with Aboriginal cultural artifacts
The Fellows would like to thank Kim Ellis, Executive Director of Botanic Gardens and Centennial Parklands, Jimmy Turner, Director of Horticultural Management at RGB Sydney, Paul Nicholson of RBG Sydney, John Siemon, Curator Manager of Australian Botanic Garden Mt. Annan, and Rebecca Anderson, Visitor Experience Manager at ABG for their time and a great discussion.