Anbg Volunteer Guides Meeting

Anbg Volunteer Guides Meeting

ANBG VOLUNTEER GUIDES’ MEETING

Minutes of 19 June 2018

1pm

ANBG Theatrette

Convenor: Rita Maclachlan Minutes: Edna Dundas

Apologies: Marguerite Carrington, Christianna Cobbold, Maureen Connelly, Ted Edwards, Steve Galliford, Sue Genner, Margaret Grist, Fran Johnson, Matthew Kehoe, Stephanie Mander, Cecilia Melano, Jill More, Trish Munro. Barbara Podger, Andy Rawlinson, John Turnbull, Alison Turner, Beth Tyerman, Pat Wright, Warwick Wright, Julia Zachara.

Minutes of the May 2018 meeting – These were accepted with minor amendment and will be put on the GuidesWeb.

  1. Business arising from the minutes - none
  1. Reports.
    ANBG Update - Megan Donaldson

Staffing – Acting General Manager, Sebastian Lang was unable to attend todays’ meeting but hopes to be at the next meeting.

Dinosaurs -There will be no dinosaurs at the Gardens this year as National Dinosaur Museum is having their 25th birthday party. ANBG is drafting an MOU with the NDM for 2019 and beyond (3-5 years).

NAIDOC Week – The 8 July Bees Wax Wraps workshop is already fully booked. Indigenous Plant Use Walks will be led by Education Rangers (12 July @ 11.30 and 1pm. Sat 14 July @ 11.30 and 1pm)

Exhibitions in the VIC– currently an ACT Porcelain Artists Association display of porcelain with hand painted native flora. After that the Burrunju Gallery will be exhibiting as part of NAIDOC week (the Gallery is located on Lady Denman Drive).

Threatened Species Children’s Art Competition – the 2018 NSW & ACT competition is open for entries for age groups between 5 and 12 yrs old.

Visit for details.

Flora Explora procurement/replacement process is underway with Craig Cosgrove.

Herbarium – Brendan Lepschi is working on the design for the new Herbarium, meeting with the designers to discuss the layout. ANBG have been given $24 million towards the project.

Trades /Living collections – planning and clearing for the Conservatory has begun. New bed at the main entrance, Banksia Garden will be complete in 2020 and interpretations are in place for areas of development. The designers, living collections and trades are working on the internal design of the Conservatory.

Horticulture – hosting a work experience student from France for 3 weeks from 12 June. She will be primarily working with depot staff and I will encourage her to go along to a guided walk or two.

Seed bank – x-ray machine is up and running and is waiting for transformers to arrive to manage power input.

Other Staffing– JohnHook, one of the ANBG IT specialists, is retiring.

  1. General Business
  2. Booked Walks - Harley Dadswell

Since our last meeting there has been one booked walk – Margaret and Andy led groups from the Academy of Science who are in the gardens today for a planning meeting. Thank you to those two guides.

It is possible we will have a local group of 8 adults wanting a Red Centre tour next month prior to their visiting Central Australia.

Looking further ahead, I expect there will be a series of walks in early September for delegates to the annual conference of the Australian Forest Growers and Institute of Foresters. A meeting in the gardens tomorrow will discuss topics for those walks. Thanks to those guides who suggested walk topics for this group.

And in October we have bookings from the Devonport Garden Club and Pymble Probus Club. More information on those will come later in the year.

  1. Rostered Walks - Peter Heaume

Peter thanked Tricia Morton for managing the roster for the past few years.

He also thanked those guides for pre-filling the roster before the monthly meeting. He will continue to request guides to plan ahead to volunteer prior to the monthly meeting.

  1. Flora Explorer Tours – Marion Jones –standing in for Barbara Podger.

There will be no weekday tours during the July school holidays as it was determined that it would be too cold plus the lack of drivers to cover these tours causes problems.

  1. ANBG Plant Finder App – David Coutts and Anne Fuchs

David Coutts, convenor of the Friends Project Group and Anne Fuchs, ANBG Biodiversity Bioinformatics Manager, provided a detailed overview of the development of a Plant Finder App for plants in the Gardens’ collection. The App is for use on smart phone and tablet. The Friends have provided financial support for the development of the App and Anne is the project manager. The App is now at the initial testing phase. David asked for volunteers to trial the App and provide feedback on optimising its operation by the end of July.

Points discussed included:

  • Some of the base maps were out of date and this does cause some minor issues. The maps are based on the GIS (Geographic Information System). There is an issue of scaling using GIS and plants could be displayed as being on a path or road.
  • There was a need to map the plants as part of the plant stock take -this is still a work in progress.
  • Can find a plant by species name or can type in a section number to listspecies in that section.
  • The project team would like feedback on the use of labels or hiding some plants from location selection. They would like to get the basic option operational first and then link to other sites for further information. This could be possible but it would be a later add-on.
  • It is a live database and updates for new plantings are done overnight.
  • The App does not have a common name facility as common names are not stored in database of plants in the Gardens.
  • TheApp is located at url not a secure site.)
  • As Internet access is required to access the App there is a problem of coverage within the Gardens as there is no or limited coverage in the rainforest garden.
  1. Information Sharing: ANBG Google Group or Facebook– Boronia Halstead

There was a discussion about whether we should use the Google Group, Face Book, or both for information sharing among the Guides. A decision was taken that the Google Group would no longer be referred to as ‘GuidesMail’, as this has proven confusing.It will be known as ANBG Guides Google Group.

The settings have now been changedso that all members of the Group can now send emails directly to everyone else in the Group.

  • To join the Google Group or to be removed from the Google Group, contact Tony Lawson or Jane Keogh.It is also possible for members to remove themselves from the Google Group.
  • To send information to the Google Group, send an email to . You can ask questions, alert others to interesting things occurring in the Gardens, and send links to articles of interest to other guides.
  • To look at all the emails that have been sent (posted) to the Google Group, go to You can search for a subject within any of the posts. There have been 507 posts since 2012.
  • All posts should be relevant to guiding.
  • Books – Kath Holtzapffel

Kath advised a useful reference book for distinguishing boabs and brachychitons is ‘Australian Bottle Trees and Boabs’ by Attila Kapitany, available in the ANBG Library and Bookshop.

  1. Items for Noting

a.Thursday talks 12.30 pm ANBG Theatrette

-21 June: Max Bourke AM ‘ Kipos or Paradeisos? Greek gardens and the idea of Mediterraneity’.

-28 June: Hon Professor Penny Olsen ‘Indigenous Australians’ early contributions to zoology’.

-5 July: Brett McNamara ‘The Art of Community Engagement in our Parks’.

-12 July: Dr Linda Broome ‘Relationships between the endangered Mountain Pygmy Possum, snow moths and a changing climate’.

-19 July: Peter Byron ‘Canberra going tropical? The new ANBG Conservatory.

b.ANBG Plant Science Group Technical Talk

Monday 2 July, 10.30 am in the ANBG Theatrette: Dr Michael Mulvaney,Conservation Research Unit, ACT Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate will speak on: “How do we ensure accuracy of information and identification from camera based records?”

  1. Professional Development
  2. Boronia Halstead: South west Western Australia

Boronia presented her talk on South West Western Australia Floristic Area (SWARF) biodiversity hot spots to be found within this triangle of land bordered by oceans on two sides and desert on the third. One area that was magnificent but had limited biodiversity was the jarrah forest.

The hot spots area is becoming a mosaic of islands as they have to compete with urbanisation as well as agricultural demands.

During her presentation she showed a ’small’ sample of the many photos that she taken.

Her presentation can found at in the GuidesWeb

Guides were reminded that those attending the 2019 Australasian Botanic Guides Conference in Perth could take that opportunity to view some of these biodiversity hot spots. Also the Kings Park organising team may have details of pre and post tours sometime in July.

  1. Next meeting: 1pm Tuesday 17 July 2018 ANBG Theatrette
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