#victorian and edwawrdian popular culture

[fatehbaz]

Open plain country and forested bushland alike are invaded by ornamental plants that have escaped from gardens. [...] Weeds are not a new concept. The first record of a weed in the colony of New South Wales was in 1796. David Collins (1798) recognised the ‘drake’ (... Lolium temelentum) among the wheat crop. These plants were the famous ‘tares’ [...], that could not be separated from the wheat without uprooting the wheat itself. Tares were familiar in England since the Early Modern period. Weeds transferred quickly from the Old World to the New, 40 European weeds being report by John Josselyn in New England as early as 1666 [...]. The European settler project depended for its success on its fellow travellers [...].

Cattle and sheep were sometimes called the ‘foot soldiers of empire’ [...]. Some introductions were ‘sentimental’, rather than economic. John Dwyer’s study on weeds in early colonial Victoria revealed that the Scottish settlers planted ‘Scotch Thistle’ for patriotic reasons: for example Georgiana McCrae had planted them at Mayfield ‘as a memento of her Gordon connections’ [...]. The creation of an ‘English’ landscape in Melbourne was a point of pride: William Howitt commented on this in 1852. When Howitt visited Tasmania in 1854, he remarked on Hobart’s well-established hedges: ‘It is England all over’ (in Dwyer 2006: 11). Creating a ‘new England’ in the landscape was an aim, before the more famous acclimitization movement had begun to introduce things more systematically. Hawthorn (Craetaegus monogyna) and Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) were both recommended by William Cobbett in his 1829 The English Gardener and therefore imported to Victoria [...]. Just 21 years after the founding of Port Philip colony, Victoria had its first weed legislation, and it was the sentimental Scottish plants that, along with Bathurst Burr (Xanthium spinosum, a native of South America), had the honour of being the subjects of the Thistle Prevention Act, assented to on 19th March 1856 [...].

In the Federation years the focus was often on public gardens where civic pride was fostered by formal tree-planting ceremonies. This is true not just in Australia but throughout the western world. The original Arbor Day was invented in [relatively] treeless [and prairie-dominated] Nebraska in 1872 in this spirit [...]. Arbor Day and Wattle Day served a ‘civic’ purpose. The moral virtue of a home garden was also encouraged. ‘Youngsters’ were encouraged to ‘tickle Mother Earth’ from the first volume The Garden and Homemaker of Australia: ‘You will find the recreation pleasant, interesting and satisfying, and you will benefit mentally, physically and morally’ (1 August 1952: 2). [...] Colour not design, and ‘flowers’ rather than ‘plants’, dominated the pages of garden magazines. [...] Gardens were a key focus of nation building: ‘home-life is the very foundation of a nation’s well-being and strength - the hearthstone of its highest ideals’ [...] (Stevens 1928:5).

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All text above by: Libby Robin, Joslin Moore, Sharon Willoughby, and Sara Maroske. “Aliens from the garden.” Proceedings of the State of Australian Cities Conference. 2011. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]