Small seeds for a big dream: how this ANU garden is growing our community

“It’s got a nice smell to it, doesn’t it?”

Rebbecca Mayo is walking through the newly planted garden space at the Australian National University (ANU), nestled beside the School of Art and Design (SOA&D).

The patch of land, up until this point, has existed unassumingly. It has been home to a few impressive ant hordes, the occasional rabbit imprints, gum trees and, more notably in spring, magpie turf wars. 

But Mayo, a Senior Lecturer at SOA&D, has long seen the potential for this space beyond a passing touchstone. She would tell anyone who would listen about her hopes for a textile garden – one that would produce natural dyes and fibres for student projects, teaching and research, as well as a place for community to gather.

“Currently, through the Plants and Place course, we forage across the campus, but there are certain plants that we would like to be able to grow, or to grow in quantity, that we can harvest and use for research and for teaching,” Mayo explains.

“For example, there are different sites on campus where we can harvest Indigofera Australis,” she says, referring to a native plant that has leaves that produce blue dye. “But there is not enough to get a really big batch of blue dye.

“So it was really exciting when we got confirmation from the Landscape and Conservation team that they still had a few sites left on campus that they wanted to develop.”

After only a week of construction by Hugh Gulliver from the ANU Landscape and Conservation team, it’s easy to see why Mayo didn’t give up on her vision. A dry creek bed has taken form and stepping stones guide you closer to native Indigofera, singing cicadas and a gathering circle made from sandstone blocks.

“We are really focused on local plants, but we are also open to plants from other areas as well,” says Mayo. 

“My colleague, Aidan Hartshorn, who is a Walgalu (Wolgalu, Wolgal) & Wiradjuri man, wants to grow a certain kind of Pimelia that grows out near Tumut in his Country. Its post-invasion common name is bushman’s bootlace, it is a really strong fibre that Aidan’s people use to make textiles and strings.

“We also want to grow things like native flax and Eucalyptus Cinerea, which are great dye plants.”

But as we dig beneath the surface, it becomes clear that the carefully selected plants are rooted in long and, at times, tangled histories.

“The course that I teach is really trying to expose students to ways of acknowledging how plants have been used, not just in practical, traditional or useful ways, but also how plants have been taken up by industrialisation and the colonial project,” Mayo says.

“It’s about getting the students to think about how the plants speak. What is their story?

“For example, traditional indigo processing went from Africa to America with enslaved people – their knowledge and their labour was exploited. They were their country’s seeds, and it was used to make white people wealthy.

“Now, that’s an extremely simplified explanation, but these rich histories can be examined through growing and working with plants.”

The garden’s lessons don’t end there.

Mick Kelly is the Manager of Landscape and Conservation at ANU, he and his team collaborated closely with Mayo to bring the garden to life. He explains circularity and resilience are a guiding philosophy to all campus greenery.

“Building landscape resilience is a big part of our maintenance strategy, soil health and plant selection are key to this.  We don’t select plants, for example, that are going to be highly reliant on water, and that’s across the whole campus,” Kelly says.

“We make our own compost and mulches here on the Acton Campus. All of the green waste we generate, roughly 1600m³ annually, is processed and incorporated back into the landscape through our maintenance activities.  It’s a true circular economy. This project used approximately 70m³ of compost and 30m³ of mulch.”

Unlike the magpies battling for authority over ANU green spaces, Kelly emphasises that the Landscape and Conservation team take a much more welcoming approach.

“For our team, we don’t associate ownership of the greenspaces on campus to particular school or college. We see it as an open space for everyone in the ANU community, and we think the whole campus should be viewed in that way,” he says.

“There is great satisfaction knowing that we contribute to the university experience, providing a diverse and unique campus landscape to be enjoyed by everyone.”

And with the garden’s seeds now firmly planted in the ground, it’s clear that this space will be no different.

“We hope that the garden will be an active site where students can work, think and socialise,” says Mayo.

“It’s a community building project which will continue to grow and evolve.”