Member-only story
Botanic Gardens
Barossa Bushgardens, Nuriootpa, South Australia
A conservation garden built around a tree and a community
At the heart of the Barossa Bushgardens is a 400-year-old river red gum. In its shade grow purple coral pea, wattle and hop bush. Its branches are loud with parrots and honeyeaters. Paths curve away from it to meander through flower beds and blue gum woodland. The garden is full of colour and bird song. But in 2001, this place was a bare-arsed paddock and the ancient red gum the last tree standing.
In that year, the gardens were established as a seed orchard producing plants to revegetate a landscape cleared for agriculture. Once the nursery was running, the gardens’ brief expanded to exhibiting local plants and conserving rare species. About 130 of the 400 or so species recorded from the Barossa Valley are now grown in themed garden areas.
Among traditional mixed plantings are a number of displays tailored for the region, including the Country Fire Service’s Fire-Wise Garden, which makes use of candy-pink pigface and saltbush as ground-covers, and correa hedges. There are also specialist collections of native grasses and Eremophila…
