Botanic Walks

Adelaide's Botanic Gardens are beautiful at any time of the year, but particular plants look their best in certain months. Now the Friends of the Botanic Gardens have produced leaflets which allow you to take your own self-guided tour of the 20 top performing plants for each month.

And believe me, some of the "top performers" like this South Africa shrub panted in 1867 - are certainly beyond the gardening prowess of even the most gifted "green thumb".
"Now this one's an interesting one isn't it?
Yes, this is the Gerdenia Thunbergia, actually one of the oldest shrubs in the garden and it has beautiful white flowers and a lovely perfume and it also has these very interesting seed pods which have to go through the gut of an elephant to germinate.

And it looks like they're in different stages to from just ripening to almost like a wood finish, so some of those have been on there for years? Yes, they have. For some reason they don't fall off because we don't have elephants in the garden perhaps".

Meanwhile Judy and her army of Garden Guides are also conducting a new tour called "Plants for People" which highlights the way plants have changed our everyday lives.
"This is a special walk which the guides have devised looking at the many many uses that mankind has for plants. We all know which plants are good to eat and which plants are beautiful in the garden, but we perhaps forget how many more uses we have for plants such as for clothing and dyes and medicines and all that sort of thing. And these are absolutely fantastic aren't they?

This is the sacred lotus which is very important to the aboriginal people, it grows in the Northern Territory. They eat the ryezomes or the roots which are rich in starch and also the stones which are quite sweet, and the seeds are also edible - in fact Leichardt the explorer who was lost in Queensland tried to make coffee from the seeds. The plant is also used in Chinese medicine to make tonics and treatments and antidotes against poison and different things like that".

The "Plants for People" tours leave from under the Plane Trees at the Botanic Gardens Restaurant. Maps pointing the way to each months "Top 20 performers" are available in boxes located at the main entrances on North Terrace and Plane Tree Drive.