Native flora plantings springs Geraldton botanical garden dream to life

The planting of native flora in the circular garden around the stone wall in Maitland Park, Geraldton, was successfully completed last week by a team of volunteers. The original plan for stage one of a botanical garden in the park had shrunk to a small garden around the semicircular stone wall, opposite St Francis Xavier Cathedral. From ambitious plans for a big stage one, Friends of Geraldton Gardens (Froggs) have struggled to raise finance and have had to wind down their dreams to this small demonstration garden. This is part of stage one and it has now been accomplished. The team, headed by Froggs chair Irene Ghannage, treasurer Lesley Colliver and myself has worked with a committee of five others to get the job done. They have all been working in there for the last three weeks with some volunteers and the coming together of so many volunteers to plant out was a welcome sight. The City of Greater Geraldton’s councillor Natasha Colliver was there to represent the mayor who was out of town. Three other councillors came and pitched in, helping with the work to dig in the plants and spread eight cubic metres of mulch. Even kids as young as five were working away! This mulch was washed river sand from Carnarvon and gave a great feel to the garden. City CEO, Ross McKim, and his wife came by, as did City engineer Chris Lee. Graham Taylor gave a welcome to country and an interesting talk from the Indigenous aspect. Graham is originally from the Coorow-Carnamah region and is well known in the Mid West. Roxanne Grant bought scones, jam and cream. Coffee and tea was enjoyed by everyone as were the free ice creams from Michael and his ice cream truck. The garden will stay fenced for a few weeks to help the plants settle in before it is opened. We trust the people of Geraldton will respect their unique native flora in what is the beginning of a major botanical garden of our Mid West flora, right here in the centre of Geraldton. Irene, the chair of Froggs, was ecstatic that we had finally pulled off a start to our long planned botanical garden. “The future of our dreams now looks real,” she said. “So it’s full steam ahead to fund the full extent of stage one, hopefully starting in 2021.” Stan Maley is the secretary of Froggs.