More than 60 BGANZ members from across Australia and New Zealand logged on for this webinar hosted by BGEN (Botanic Gardens Engagement Network) and BCARM (Collections and Records Management Group) to hear how three very different gardens are building lasting partnerships with First Nations communities. The session featured Doug McDougall of the Olive Pink Botanic Garden in Alice Springs, Cathy Olive of Euroa Arboretum in Victoria, and Hayley Smithers-Kirk of the Botanic Gardens of Sydney. 

Alice Springs: signs that speak Arrernte 
At Olive Pink Botanic Garden, grounds manager Doug McDougall shared a bush food and medicine signage project developed with Arrernte elder Veronica Dobson OAM and her daughter Camille. New signs carry QR codes linking to audio recordings of plant names and stories told in Arrernte, alongside a companion project correcting the Arrernte spelling of Alice Springs street names. McDougall traced the collaboration back to a 2019 drought, when Veronica introduced herself while he was removing a dying bean tree and asked for the wood for carving. The partnership has since grown to include propagating native pear along the Todd River to help it regenerate as buffel grass is cleared; free and discounted venue hire for Aboriginal-led tours and community organisations; and a gift shop stocking Aboriginal art and bush medicine products. 

Victoria: seed as a precious resource 
Cathy Olive described how the 28-hectare Euroa Arboretum, a grassy woodland restoration site sitting across Taungurung and Yorta Yorta Country, has built 25 years of collaboration with local mobs into every part of its operation. The Arboretum produces roughly 70,000 plants a year, coordinates an Indigenous seed bank for the Goulburn Broken catchment, and has adopted a written principle, developed jointly with traditional owners, that treats native seed as “a precious resource” rather than a commodity, reserving the right to decline sales if a project’s use of the seed isn’t a good fit. Grant funding rounds supported an Aboriginal-led signage project and a co-designed ceremony and saltbush garden, now used as a base for Taungurung-led tours. Olive credited the progress to patience: relationships, she said, built at their own pace rather than to a project deadline. 

Sydney: renewing a 26-year-old story 
Hayley Smithers-Kirk closed the session with an account of the Cadi’jam Ora story journey at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, on Gadigal Country at Wagamagalya (Farm Cove). The original trail, built for the 2000 Olympics, told the site’s history largely through settler records; the renewed version, delivered in partnership with Transport for NSW, was reshaped over a two-year process of cultural consultation led by Gadigal elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grosvenor and Bidjigal-Dharawal-Yuin elder Uncle Dean Kelly. The result spans 21 panels and more than 75 metres of signage, with design led by Gadigal-informed artist Dennis Golding and drawn from the lines, colours and seasonal stories of Country, including consultation with the First Nations nursery IndigiGrow. Hayley said the project was guided “not by systematic deadlines, but at the speed of trust.”