How we care for the Botanic Garden During Festival Season
Festival season is upon us in Adelaide, and every year our vibrant parklands play host to a range of festivals and events, like the Adelaide Festival, Fringe Festival, and WOMADelaide.
Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla – adjacent to Adelaide Botanic Garden – forms part of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium botanic estates and contains a curated botanical living collection for science and conservation. But its majestic, living collection of trees, expansive lawns and unique natural spaces also make it one of Adelaide’s premier outdoor entertainment venues, and the perfect spot to enjoy an outdoor festival, concert, or cinema experience.
Welcoming tens of thousands of visitors to our parks and botanic gardens gives us the opportunity to showcase these impressive spaces to new audiences in exciting ways. But have you ever wondered what it takes to ensure the living collection of plants and trees is protected along the way?
Discover how the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium care for these spaces during festival season, and some simple ways you can help.
It all starts with a plan
As the saying goes, "proper planning prevents poor performance,” and this is no different for our Botanic Garden spaces. To maintain the health and resilience of these public spaces and their living collections, expert horticultural staff follow a bespoke management plan with programs designed specifically to care for and nurture the living landscapes.
For lawns – just like your backyard – irrigating, fertilising and top-dressing are key to keeping them in top condition year-round, especially before events. For larger trees, including the many Ficus macrophylla (Moreton Bay Fig) and Eucalyptus camaldulensis (River Red Gum), inspections and maintenance identify any concerns and ensure best practice arboriculture works are completed pre-event. To safeguard tree root zones around tree trunks – which can extend as far as the reach of the tree’s branches – crews may apply mulch and exclusion zones, where required.
Protecting our historic Moreton Bay Fig trees
With their beautiful buttress roots anchored across the ground, specimens of the Moreton Bay Fig can be found along Plane Tree Drive between Conservatory Gate and Friend’s Gate. There’s even a WOMADelaide stage named after these mighty evergreens.
But despite looking sturdy, these 150+ year-old members of the living collection are showing signs of impact and need extra care in their old age. If you notice a sign or a closed-off area around the base of a tree, please respect these boundaries and simply enjoy their immense beauty and shade instead.
Caring for the park's upside-down residents
Regular visitors to Botanic Park will be familiar with the resident colony of Grey-headed flying-Foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus), a vulnerable native species that has called this area home permanently since 2010. To protect both the flying‑foxes and our visitors, you may notice exclusion zones or temporary detours in place around their roosting areas.
Extreme heat can cause these flying mammals significant, life-threatening stress, which is further exaggerated by disturbance, so during hotter periods the Botanic Gardens team supports them by cooling the area with aerial sprinklers and ground irrigation. During WOMADdelaide, trained staff and wildlife rescue organisations are on site to monitor the colony and assist any animals that may become injured or distressed.
Grey-headed flying-foxes are protected under both national and state legislation, and visitors are reminded not to not handle or interfere with any bats – especially Grey‑headed Flying‑foxes – or any other wildlife they may come across. A little space goes a long way in helping protect this important species and ensuring a safe festival experience for all.
Feet on the trail, the garden prevails
During major events, people, stages, vehicles, cranes, lights, and tents all converge in one area, so significant time and planning goes into deciding where things should (and shouldn’t!) go on the grounds. The Adelaide Botanic Garden and Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla are special places with huge heritage, cultural, scientific and environmental value, so those fences, gates, bollards and bits of tape you see are there to help protect them.
All plants and animals here are protected under the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium Act 1978, so sticking to marked paths and access points helps us look after the landscape and the gardens’ collections – and keeps everyone safe while enjoying the festival atmosphere.
Post-event TLC
While best-practice horticultural care is applied before events, the presence of large multiple stages, structures, and thousands of attendees can quickly compact and impact the grounds and collections (imagine 100,000 people traipsing across your lawn over a long-weekend!).
After events, these spaces need rest, recovery, and targeted care – particularly after extended hot or dry periods. Post-event, the Botanic Gardens horticulturalists promptly begin irrigating, aerating and de-compacting the soil, and depending on the time of year and the event’s impact, may also carry out turf replacement.
So, sit back, relax and enjoy the fabulous show, and rest assured knowing that the botanical collections, landscape, trees, lawns and wildlife are in safe hands before, during, and after the gates close.
Check out some of the upcoming events at Adelaide Botanic Garden.