Down to Earth
In this series of articles staff, students and graduates of Burnley College share their views with Global Garden readers on a range of topical horticultural issues. Burnley College is part of the University of Melbourne’s Institute of Land and Food Resources and enjoys an esteemed reputation as one of Australia’s premier horticultural institutions. Click here for a list of other articles in the series.

We had always had an interest in the islands. The Galápagos represents the heartland of evolutionary natural history and is a mecca for scientists. When we decided to spend five months travelling in South America in 1995, the opportunity to visit the Galápagos presented itself. We made contact with some of the scientists working at the Charles Darwin Research Station. There are a large number of international scientific volunteers working there at any one time – currently, there are four Australians.

We were captivated by the place and asked if there was a project that we could be involved in on a volunteer basis. The entire area is environmentally very sensitive and a number of the personnel live on the site. We were asked if we would like to be involved in redesigning the Director's garden which is within the Charles Darwin Research Station. We decided to return with a tour group. After the tour some of the group stayed on with us to help design and implement the garden.

The Director had a young family and he and wife Pippa needed a play space for the children. They also needed a shady cool area in which to relax. (The Galápagos is on the equator and can be very hot in summer - we worked in temperatures of over 30 degrees C every day.) The most important thing about the garden was that it needed to be environmentally in keeping with the remainder of the park. There was a marine iguana nesting site in the front yard that had to be preserved. All plants used had to be indigenous Galápagos plants and there were to be no grasses used. Attracting wildlife to the garden was a primary objective. Finally, the budget … it was almost non-existent!

There were quite a few! To start with, the research station is on a lava field and we were faced with the challenge of constructing a garden on solid basalt. All materials including hard surfacing had to be gleaned from local sources and preferably from on-site. The tools we had were quite antique - a wheelbarrow with a steel rim, an old crow bar, a rake, a few shovels and machetes. Our extra workforce was three Ecuadorian labourers who spoke only Spanish.

The first thing we did was to design a new entrance to the garden. The house is beside the seashore and a grove of mangroves. We made an entry path to the garden through the mangroves which immediately created a feeling of shady coolness. In doing this we discovered some wonderful mulch under the mangroves which made an appealing soft surfacing for the path. This new entrance circumnavigated the marine iguana nesting site.

We also collected some rounded softer-contoured rocks from the nearby rocky beach and placed them in the shade, arranging them so that they could collect water. This also helped to attract the birds and created a place for the children to play.

For the leisure area we designed a 'living platform' by surrounding lava rock with a dry stone wall and then topping it with scoria. Into this we planted a cactus forest. We needed to get cactus trees that were large enough to provide the shade needed. Fortunately, we were given permission to rescue some large cactus trees that were being bulldozed to make a new road through the National Park. To plant them we had to dig holes in the rock with a crowbar! We planted 9, stabilised them with wooden braces and hoped for the best. When we went back this year we were delighted to find all but one cactus had survived and thrived.

We also had organized for some plants to be grown in the shade houses on the site before our arrival. We chose indigenous plants such as the fast growing, shady Cordia lutea, Yellow Cordia, which has beautiful golden yellow flowers for much of the year, the lemon-yellow flowered Gossypium darwinii, Galapagos Cotton, and Conocarpus erectus, the Button Mangrove. All three provided food and shelter for the local birds and animals such as the finches and iguanas.

On our most recent visit to the Galápagos we were involved in producing the new Master Development Landscape Plan for the CDRS visitor site. We also worked on the interpretation of a land iguana breeding programme display. We were delighted to find that our previous efforts to attract native fauna to the Director's garden had been very successful. A large bull sea lion had decided that our nice soft mangrove mulch path was just the place for his daily snooze and he had taken it over. He had become a very effective 'watch lion' roaring at anyone who used the path. It did make entering and leaving the garden somewhat difficult, but the conservation-minded Director was very pleased!

While we were there this last time, the President of Ecuador visited the park. This was to celebrate the extension of the listing for the Galápagos Islands by the UNESCO Heritage Committee as a Natural World Heritage Marine Reserve. The area has been extended to include all internal waters, islands and sea inside a 40 nautical mile radius. The Reserve now covers an area of 133,000 square kilometres. It is encouraging to see a country like Ecuador strengthening its commitment to conservation and it has been very gratifying for us to be able to play a part. It is particularly satisfying to be able to assist in getting information about the research being done there out into the public domain so that the many visitors to the Galápagos can more readily appreciate the value of this precious part of the world.