By Stevan Milentijevic, Ranger, Dandenong Ranges Botanic Gardens
2020 view: The Kurume Azalea Bowl in 2020, showing how canopy growth, plant maturity and changing structure alter the horticultural decisions required to maintain a living collection over time.
At Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden, the Kurume Azalea Bowl is one of the garden’s most recognisable living landscapes. In spring, it is seen as a display: colour, massing, topography and view. But to maintain it well, it cannot be understood only as a display – it is also a living collection shaped by repeated decisions over time.
A maintenance record might say that azaleas were pruned, a pest treatment applied, mulch spread, irrigation adjusted, or plants replaced. These records are useful – they tell us what happened, when it happened, and sometimes who carried out the work. But in living collections, the most important information is not always the task itself. It is the judgement behind the task.
Why was one section pruned harder than another? What long-term form was being encouraged? Was a pest treatment responding to a single outbreak, or to a broader pattern of plant stress? Was a plant replaced like-for-like because of collection value, design intent, historic continuity, or simply because that was what happened to be available? A garden can be well documented and still poorly remembered.
This is especially true in long-lived botanic garden landscapes, where decisions accumulate slowly over years. The visible garden is shaped not only by annual maintenance but by repeated judgement – pruning decisions, plant health observations, and the inherited knowledge of staff who have watched the same plants through many seasons.
The Kurume Azalea Bowl is a useful example because each intervention affects the next one. Pruning is cumulative: the decision made this year influences the structure available next year. A harder cut in one section may be part of correcting shape, encouraging renewal, managing decline, or restoring a broader visual relationship across the bowl.
The same applies to plant health. A pest issue such as lace bug can be recorded as a treatment event, but the more useful question may be: why are certain plants more affected than others? Is moisture stress involved? Is exposure playing a role? Are some sections of the planting declining because of age, soil conditions, irrigation limitations, or competition? A treatment record can say what was done. A living memory note can say what was being tested, watched, or understood.
Historical photographs add another layer. They can show former density, height, openness, sightlines, planting patterns and changes in character over time. But photographs need interpretation. They become more valuable when linked to current horticultural decisions: what are we trying to retain, recover, adapt, or deliberately let change?
Much of this knowledge often sits in informal places: the memories of long-serving staff, conversations on site, old photo folders, handwritten notes, the habits of particular gardeners, or the practical understanding passed from one person to another. Horticulture has always relied on observation, memory and apprenticeship, and there is nothing wrong with that on its own. The vulnerability lies in knowledge that isn’t captured in a form able to survive staff changes, management changes, restructures and shifting priorities.
The solution does not need to be complicated. In fact, if it is too complicated, it probably will not be used. What may be useful is a simple additional layer of record keeping for significant living collection areas: a living memory note. For a major garden feature, this could briefly capture the current condition of the planting, the long-term direction being pursued, the reasoning behind major pruning or plant health decisions, relevant historical images, recurring issues, and the next decisions future staff should be aware of.
This kind of record works alongside a work order or maintenance log rather than replacing it – adding context and intention to what was already being recorded.
For example, a task record might say: “Azaleas pruned after flowering.”
A living memory note might add: “Western edge pruned harder to reduce outward collapse and encourage lower regrowth. Central section retained at greater height to preserve massed flowering effect from the main entry path. Continue monitoring weaker plants on upper slope; possible moisture stress contributing to lace bug susceptibility.”
The second record does not need to be long. Its value is that it preserves the reasoning. This matters because living collections are never static. They are always becoming something. Every pruning cut, replacement, pest response, irrigation change or design adjustment becomes part of the next decision. When the reasoning is lost, future work can become reactive. Staff may maintain what is visible without understanding the direction underneath.
Botanic gardens hold plants, but they also hold intent. They hold design histories, collection values, scientific and horticultural knowledge, cultural meanings, and the accumulated judgement of the people who care for them. If we only record completed tasks, we risk losing the thread that connects those values to daily work.
Recording horticultural judgement isn’t about freezing a garden in place. Future gardeners should be free to adapt, disagree, improve and respond to changing conditions but they should be able to do so with knowledge of what came before. A living collection needs a living memory.
In the end, the work of public horticulture is not only to keep gardens presentable. It is to carry meaning forward through living material. To do that well, we need records that show not just what we did, but what we understood, what we intended, and what the next person needs to know before making the next cut.
Historical view: Historical view of the Kurume Azalea Bowl, showing open sightlines, strong seasonal colour massing and the formal display character of the planting.
