Paulownia

I saw my first Paulownia soon after arriving in Melbourne sixty years ago. I spent most of my Sundays in the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens. Amongst the astonishing treasures in the garden was a small tree of Paulownia fortunei which, when in flower, was covered by trusses of large, pale lilac-mauve, foxglove-like flowers. I could be wrong but it doesn’t appear to be still growing in the gardens any more

During the 1960s I was working in a commercial nursery earning a very modest wage. I had a young family and as it cost nothing to wander around the Botanic Gardens and picnic on the lawns we went there most Sundays. One day whilst meandering through the gardens my oldest son, Ric, who was three years old at the time, asked me the name of a plant. I said it was a grass tree. He got very cross and ‘’no what’s the real name.” “Xanthorrhoea australis” I said. I knew then that he was fated to be a gardener. He is now the manager of the 60 acres of gardens and grounds that surround the Chelsea Royal Hospital, the home of the Chelsea Pensioners and the Chelsea Flower Show.

A tree that astonished me whilst we walked through the gardens in those days was a giant silky oak, Grevillea robusta, which towered over the lake near the kiosk in the centre of the gardens. It was in full flowering glory the first time I saw it. The horizontal heads of orange flowers sparkled on every branch.  I had seen this species before in my native England as a quite modest indoor pot plant.