The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, Tra La!

by Anna Campbell

As promised last month, today I've got a stack of photos of Ballarat's beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens to share with you all.

I hope you're in the mood for spring flowers!

Here's the website for the gardens if you'd like more info on this beautiful corner of Australia: http://www.ballarat.com/botanicgardens/gardens/index.htm

At the start of October, I had a week of travel. I had a weekend in Melbourne and then went out to stay with good friends in Ballarat.

The last time I was in Ballarat, it was a dust bowl. They hadn't had rain for years. The huge lake in the center of town was a paddock with a muddy puddle in the middle of it. Trees that were hundreds of years old were dying for lack of water. All very tragic.

This time I visited after Victoria has had extensive rainfall and it was a different place. Lush and verdant and teeming with life. You would honestly think you were in England, some of these fields were so green and pleasant.

I had a lovely morning at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens and went wild with the camera. These are some of the shots!

You'll notice that there's a definite European flavor to the plants and design of the gardens. Deliberately so. Ballarat is a town that was founded on the fortune in gold discovered in the area. In the Victorian era, it was packed with homesick and well-to-do Britons who wanted to recreate a corner of their homeland in what they saw as an arid and alien landscape.

So we get roses and poppies and camellias and magnificent European trees. Because of Dutch elm disease, the elms in Victoria count as one of the last places in the world where you can see mature versions of these magnificent trees.

A treat at the Ballarat Gardens is Adam Lindsay Gordon's cottage. ALG was an early Australian poet who is the only Aussie writer featured in Westminster Abbey, quite an honor.

Here's his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Lindsay_Gordon

He had a difficult and tempestuous life full of drama and incident. This scion of an aristocratic Scottish family was famous as a jockey and a wild boy.

Here's a picture of his statue which currently stands outside the Victorian parliament in Melbourne. That's a saddle at his feet, in tribute to his abilities as a horseman.

His poetry is full of vim and vigor. One of my favorite quotes of his is the one that many people know, even if they don't know who penned it:

Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone -- 
Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.

It's not a bad philosophy, is it? The Queen quoted it in her Christmas message a few years ago - which I thought was a nice tribute to Adam Lindsay Gordon.


But enough  literary stuff, let's look at pretty flowers! It's spring down here in Australia. Let's celebrate!

What's your favorite flower? Do any flowers have a sentimental meaning for you? I must say I love a lot of flowers, but I think my taste tends to lean toward the traditional. I particularly love roses and peonies. What about you?