For ZOOM Meeting Id and Password, please email oatleyff@gmail.com
Ian is the Curator at the Alice Springs Botanic Garden which was gazetted in 1956 as the Australian Arid Regions Flora Reserve after intense lobbying by the Garden’s founder, and first honorary curator, Olive Muriel Pink. It is located adjacent to the Todd River and not far from the centre of Alice Springs.
Ian will give an introduction to the Garden and will tell us about Olive Pink Pink, a passionate advocate for improved rights and conditions for Australia’s Indigenous people who, in her later years, concentrated on botanical pursuits and established the currently named Garden, spending the last two decades of her life battling drought conditions and almost non-existent operational funding to develop her vision for the Reserve.
He will then discuss various aspects of the garden and events that take place there, including the Olive Pink Opera in early October 2022, interesting plant species of the Garden, the work of volunteers and research projects carried out in the garden. He will also talk about the unfolding ecological disaster of buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) in Central Australia and the importance of land restoration and botanic gardens, how termites not worms do all the work in the desert, working with Aboriginal communities, Central Australian Landcare projects and potential impact of climate change on flora in the arid regions/mitigation efforts/‘climate ready’ species