Conference
2004
Happening in Hamilton
Saturday, October 30th,
2004.
RNZIH
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 3.30PM
Rotary
Lounge at Hamilton Gardens complex off Cobham Drive, Hamilton.
ANNUAL
BANKS MEMORIAL LECTURE 7.30PM
Chartwell
Room at Hamilton Gardens complex off Cobham Drive, Hamilton.
Speaker:
Peter Cave, well known grower, traveller and surfer.
Subject:
New Zealand needs new plants - the challenges of discovering
new plants and the difficulties of getting them from their originating
countries and into New Zealand.
The Banks Lecture commemorates
Sir Joseph Banks who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage
of discovery to New Zealand in 1769. Banks was a great promoter
of science in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
He later became President of the Royal Society, London for many
years and controlled the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
Banks was particularly
interested in plants that could be used for practical purposes.
He encouraged the introduction of such plants into other countries
for possible commercial use and he fostered the exchange of plants
and animals between the old world and the new worlds then being
made known by exploration.
It was therefore fitting
that the 2004 Banks Lecture dealt with the role of introduced plants
in New Zealand. In our agriculture, our horticulture and our forestry
New Zealand is almost completely dependent on introduced plants.
Ultimately we depend on them for our livelihood. Yet it is fashionable
for introduced plants to receive a bad press, being often portrayed
as unwelcome aliens, inappropriate for our landscape.
Peter Cave is a nurseryman
from Cambridge who specialises in novel, cool-temperate plants,
especially from Asia. Peter is not a narrow-minded plant chauvinist.
He believes that we should take advantage of the enormous diversity
of plants available to us, that we should choose to use the very
best of plants irrespective of their country of origin. In his
lecture he discussed the need to introduce new plants to New Zealand.
He relayed his own experiences in plant hunting following in the
footsteps of some of the great plant explorers and finding the plants
that should do well in New Zealand. He then described possibly
the hardest part, the many regulatory hurdles to actually introducing
new plants.
Read article based on this
lecture as a PDF
and webpage
BIG
DAY OUT:
To
make a day of these events, we organised a total package for a big
day out to have an in depth look at Hamilton Gardens.
The
day included:
- Guided tours of the gardens -
10.30am with Gardens' Director Peter Sergel
Afternoon - Specialist talks and tours of particular gardens of
interest
- Finger food lunch
- Pre dinner social hour
- Set menu dinner
- AGM and the Banks Lecture
Organised
by:
Bronwen
Rowse
P.O. Box 34
Patumahoe.
Email: bmrowse@xtra.co.nz
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