This garden has a way of challenging the way that we think of plants and their place in ecosystems. It’s a reminder that relationships that seem to exist in complete balance have never been static.
On lunawanna-allonah/Bruny Island lies a garden of primordial plants. They come from all corners of the globe – South America, Africa, New Zealand, India, Australia – and yet have an ancient connection. Once, they grew together on the supercontinent, Gondwanaland, before it began to split apart about 180 million years ago.
Tasmanian endemics have a special place in the garden, growing side-by-side with cousins from around the world.
The Inala Jurassic Garden sits within 600 hectares of conservation reserve, managed by Dr Tonia Cochran and the Inala Foundation. This land is a sanctuary for critically endangered swift parrots and forty-spotted pardalotes. I’m on a visit with my partner and young family, hoping that the calming effect of the outdoors will work its magic on our toddler and nine-month-old.
Our guide, Steven "Bori" Morris, sports a trademark large hat and beard. While this combination would usually frighten our toddler, Bori’s warm manner puts Theo at ease. Over the years, Bori’s job description as property manager has evolved from farming poll hereford cattle to growing ancient plants. Judging from the number of rare plants in the garden, he seems to have a knack of making anything grow.
A living fossil, Gingko biloba, greets us just inside the gate. “It’s the oldest of the old. You can’t have a Gondwanan plant garden without these,” says Bori. While the distinctive fan-shaped leaves of the plant now decorate everything from cushion covers to wallpaper, identical prints are stamped on fossils up to 200 million years old, one of which can be viewed in the on-site museum. It is the sole surviving member of Ginkgoaceae, a family older than dinosaurs which was found all over the world 240 million odd years ago. A few remaining wild populations clung on to life through the Ice Ages in mountain refuges in China, surviving against the odds.
Bori introduces us to the Araucaria family, primeval “forest giants, there to shelter everything else”. There are plants from all three groups: Araucaria, Agathis and Wollemia (of which the Australian Wollemi pine is the lone survivor). Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree, is strangely compelling. Its trunk is composed of thousands of triangular green plates tapering upwards to the sky, with similar limbs emanating upwards at regular intervals. Smaller but otherwise identical branches curve off from the main limbs, with paw-like ends.
“This is a good example of a survivor. Not only is it spiky, but it’s quite toxic and poisonous. A dinosaur would eat this tree in two bites, so they had to make themselves very unpleasant.”
We imagine the young tree on Gondwanaland, evading browsing reptilian jaws. “Cactuses can be spiky too,” young Theo informs us authoritatively, having recently been gifted one by dad.
Like eucalypts, monkey-puzzle trees look vastly different in maturity. An internet search shows a tall, palm-like tree with an elongated, woody trunk, dusted with snow.
Other Araucaria trees also possess strategies which helped them to survive giant predators in the past. A New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) camouflaged itself as a stick, until it reached about two metres. “Like a lot of New Zealand plants, they remember moa birds,” says Bori, “so they make themselves look dead and unappetising until they get above the height of a moa bird grazing.”
The garden path loops around, disclosing hidden pockets along the way. In a Nothofagus bed, a specimen of Tasmanian N. gunnii (fagus – our only deciduous tree) grows happily by close relatives from South America and New Zealand, including N. antarctica. Like many Tasmanians, we make the autumnal pilgrimage to Mt Field to see the golden-red hues of turning fagus. We are struck by how similar N. antarctica looks. In Chile, it forms a dense understorey under the monkey puzzle trees, which tower like umbrellas over the top, Bori explains. Strange to think of these two plants – one familiar-looking, one strikingly different– growing alongside one another for millions of years.
This garden has a way of challenging the way that we think of plants and their place in ecosystems. It’s a reminder that relationships that seem to exist in complete balance have never been static.
Theo is more excited by the other occupant of the Nothofagus bed. “Kids love dinosaurs. That’s why we’ve got ‘em! We figure, dinosaur-age plants, have a few dinosaurs,” says Bori.
N. cunninghamii (myrtle) grows locally too. The Inala team collects seed for the Tasmanian Seed Conservation Centre at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, as part of a wider survey on the species for the Global Conservation Consortium for Nothofagus.
Mossy beds feature Tasmanian highland conifers: King Billy pine, Mt Mawson pine, mountain plum pine. There is also a rare Blue Mountains pine (Pherosphaera fitzgeraldii), a small conifer with beautiful, drooping foliage. It usually grows over waterfalls in the Blue Mountains, but seems to be thriving here.
There’s also rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum), prized for its timber in New Zealand. “When they harvest one of these trees nowadays, they use a big military helicopter to lift the tree out, so that they don’t hurt any other trees in the forests,” says Bori. “Not a stick of it is allowed to leave the country until it’s made into a finished product. The forests in New Zealand are managed by the native peoples. They’re treated as a sacred place to look after.”
There are many surprises on the tour: a sweet-tasting mountain plum pine berry, which has miraculously escaped the paws and beaks of the abundant wildlife that inhabit the garden; hundreds of red and white waratahs in full bloom, beside proteas, banksia bushes and a Chilean fire tree; a hybridised Nothofagus tree – with parents from two different continents, one evergreen, one deciduous; scores of New Holland honeyeaters, flitting around grevillea.
The Inala Jurassic Garden turns our perceptions of plants upside down, unsettling our assumptions. A little Tasmanian purple heart berry, on another continent, is transformed into an enormous wineberry tree. I feel a sense of wonder at the tenacity of life, and its ability to evolve to different conditions – given enough time.
Despite their amazing ability to adapt, these plants have a worrying Achilles’ heel: fire. A warming climate with more frequent dry lightning strikes threatens their existence, including our alpine conifers. In 2016, the previously unthinkable happened. More than 11,000 hectares of the Tasmanian World Heritage Area burned. Stands of King Billy and pencil pine, believed to be protected forever, disappeared. Scientists fear they won’t come back. In the 2020 fires, more than 50 per cent of the Gondwana World Heritage rainforests on the mainland were lost.
As Gondwanan plants come under increasing pressure, spaces like the Jurassic Garden will only become more important. One of their missions is to grow insurance populations of these threatened plants, as part of their conservation program. This, aptly, is called the Noah’s Ark Project.
Could the garden help us to think differently about our environmental crises too, perhaps to come up with creative new ideas for tackling them?
Just outside the garden is a young yellow flowering gum, covered with red blossoms (E. leucoxylon, subsp. megalocarpa). This little tree could be a life raft for swift parrots, the Inala team hope. In the past year, Bori propagated about 300 blue gums for locals to plant, to provide food in future decades for the swift parrots. The problem is, by the time these trees reach maturity, these cheerful little birds might already be extinct. This is where another Inala idea comes in.
In 2021, when swift parrots were breeding in good numbers on Bruny Island, staff noticed swift parrots feeding voraciously on E. leucoxylon, which takes only five years to flower. “This could be the answer,” says Bori. “If we get them planted en masse around Bruny, it could be the difference. Our latest project is to grow a hell of a lot of these.”
The challenge is to convince decision-makers to plant a tree that is not native to lutruwita/Tasmania, although with accelerating species migration in response to a changing climate, lines between native and non-native species are only going to blur. Meanwhile, plantings of this compact tree in gardens around nipaluna/Hobart is a practical way to help these lively birds.
A tour of the Inala Jurassic Garden is a trip through space and time. There are moments where we vividly imagine dinosaurs roaming amidst these trees. It also draws us to think towards the future. In a warming world, the continued survival of these elders is not guaranteed. Places like this unique garden offer hope that they might.
Fiona Howie, Dan Tardy and their two sons were guests of Inala Foundation for their garden tour.
Inala Jurassic Garden is at 320 Cloudy Bay Rd, South Bruny. Ph: 6923 1217. It is open seven days a week, from 9am to 5pm.
Fiona Howie is a teacher of English and history with a Bachelor of Advanced Arts (Honours) from the University of Sydney. She lives on the sunny eastern shore of nipaluna/Hobart with her partner and two sons.