Evergreen is the Botanical Life of a Plant Punk

"My visit to Padua [in 2008] was at the start of a seven-week holiday in Europe with my wife, Lynda, part of a three-month break from my job as director of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden. It was time to recharge and refresh, but also to do a little writing if I could find the inspiration. In the prospicient timescale of botanic gardens, I was, after four years, still a newbie in my job. My best known accomplishment so far was a ‘chainsaw massacre’ of fig trees in Sydney’s Domain. I was doing regular radio interviews and publishing occasional pieces of writing about plants and gardens, but this was at the start of my career as a botanic garden director. Early enough to not be obsessed with legacy, but late enough to be a little cocky about the importance and value of botanic gardens. By 2008, I’d been working in botanic gardens continuously for eighteen years, plus another nine months during a gap year in my university studies. 

In Padua, I was being tested not by an oracle but by a novelist..."

My new book starts in Padua, near Venice, at the the site of the world's oldest (modern) botanic garden, where I contemplate what it is that makes a botanic garden a botanic garden. The excerpt above is from three pages in, following a brief history of the earliest botanic gardens and a one-sided conversation with the narrator of Robert Dessaix's Night Letters who decides not to enter the unwelcoming gates of the Orto Botanico di Pàdova. 

The writing I did in Padua didn't end up in this book, but the thinking did. Evergreen: The Botanical Life of a Plant Punk is now available in hard copy from your local book shop or through Booktopia, and electronically on your favourite e-device (e.g. Kindle). Publisher Thames and Hudson have done a marvelous job with both versions.

As you'll see, I've divided my life and the book into eight segments: 

Prelude: Pàdova

1    Nature

2    Words

3    Science

Interlude: Ficus

4    Princeps

5    Culture

6    Les Revenants

The first half is a deep dive into what brought me to Padua, and to that existential question about the value of botanic gardens. It begins with an ill-fated adventure into 'nature', and ends with me at thirty-eight:

...a capable scientist, a faltering journalist and a novice manager.

Along the way I discover good books and music, and that one can make a decent living out of collecting and naming algae. Truly. Eventually, though, the lure of botanic gardens and the trappings of high office were too strong.  

The second half is all about my time as director at three of the world's great botanic gardens, in Sydney, Melbourne and London: 'boss' at the first two, and with the grand title of Director Conservation, Living Collections and Estates at Kew Gardens in London (giving me responsibility for more than half the staff and most of the budget).

To refresh the palette, there is an interlude in the middle where I reflect on a the removal of a few fig trees in Sydney...

Sydney's Domain, April 2004

Along the way I have encounters with the likes of Nick Cave and Paul Keating, and a brief but timely phone call with Kerry Packer. I navigate the Tube in London to find the best garage music, and defend the right for Tinker Bell to frequent Melbourne's botanic garden. I also weigh in on matters such as whether growing plants native to Australia is patriotic or nationalistic (and is that good or bad?); the Eurocentricity of our plant naming system; which botanic garden is the best (Sydney, Melbourne, London or elsewhere?); and the story behind my irritation with Australia's four seasons.

That and much more in 350 pages of carefully chosen words, lightly leavened with a few black and white photographs. All up, I hope it gives a sense of not only what makes me tick but why it is we should care about botanic gardens. 

This final picture is of me, taken by my father John in 1966 - the year he died. The photo didn't make it into the book, but John does.