how can you not be a little bit excited
about a flower as big and glamorous as
the begonia well i'm not a little bit
excited i am super pumped to be able to
celebrate the ballarat begonia festival
and of course all around me begonias as
far as the eye can see
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the curator of the ballarat botanical
gardens and one of the people making
what has to be one of the most colorful
festivals in australia happen
is peter marquand
this is such a spectacular glass house
to be in what's sharing the space with
us how many plants we have around 700 of
these we probably have one of the
biggest collections of begonias probably
in the world
because
we grow two and a half thousand of them
a staggering number of plants and
our nursery one of our glass houses is
actually full
at the moment of tuberous begonias what
do the colors do for you i mean standing
here
it's beyond the best television screen
ultra high definition your eyes start to
buzz when you look at the intensity of
color it's quite amazing to take in
isn't it and we find when people are
coming into the conservatory the first
response is where people actually stop
um and try and take it in because we
have such brightness and variation in in
the different colors here
we have two different types of begonias
in our collection here bella the
tuberous begonia
tubers begonia has a tuber now the other
type that we have here at ballarat are
the the non-tuberous begonia so these
guys have pretty insignificant little
flowers but still pretty stunning yeah
but
i like the the different leaves
incredible
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how do the flowers
become so big what's behind that we take
all the female buds off because we don't
want the plants to produce seed then the
plant puts all the energy into the
flowers that are left so which are the
male flowers and so the male flowers are
naturally bigger anyway
and when their purpose is really to be
showy
ballarat is one of australia's oldest
and at one time richest cities and its
love of begonias goes back more than a
century
the garden started here in 1857 so and i
think really with ballarat we have to
remember that it is a gold mining town
so our history is really very much
intertwined with the gold rush
it was a time in ballarat's history
where there was a lot of nurseries
around here and so a lot of nurseries
were experimenting with begonias so it
was a natural progression for them to
come into the gardens collection
where abouts do the begonias originate
from
the original troubas begonia were
discovered in south america so and then
they've been really developed from that
original species begonia
so as a gardener watching this what do i
need to create to make them thrive
cool they don't want afternoon sun so
good morning sun
shelter from the wind
and are there any varieties that are
more suited to the garden yeah i would
recommend a variety called non-stop so
it is still a tuberous begonia and it
grows shorter so it's only around 200
mil and it's quite easy for the home
gardener to obtain and it's also really
easy for us to grow as well
all the begonias here look fantastic at
ground level in pots but
they look incredible as a hanging basket
they are pretty these are a slightly
different form but they still are a
tuberous begonia but they are a
pendulous form so they naturally hang
i think there's such a variation in the
the different shapes and the colours and
look it's hard to go past that but i
don't know of other plants that have
that much variety and
yeah they're pretty stunning aren't they
now while the public see the perfect
flowers set up there in the conservatory
there's a lot of blood sweat and
probably a few tears that goes into
making them look so perfect all at the
same time and all at the same place so
i've decided to go behind the scenes to
get the inside scoop
aaron brennan is one of the specialist
horticulturists
so where does it all begin
so it begins here so this is a tuber and
these vary in size the trick of putting
a begonia is not too big a pot because
if too much water then they rot
so you put it in a nice free draining
potting mix and you put it right at the
top just under the soil
like this
italian
wore it in that's as simple as that is
but once they've established and their
roots have grown we check them every day
and we water the whole lot every day by
hand
how long will it take until it starts to
shoot possibly three to four weeks not
very long at all and you have to fuss
over them is there a lot of maintenance
involved uh we do stake them because
they get
really heavy and are prone to snap
and when we put them into the
conservatory we wire the flowers so they
sit up a bit and people can see them
better
sheree blood is another member of the
horticultural team
there's so many begonias here
how do you keep the numbers going so
they're all grown by cuttings and the
best time to do this is when they're
first shooting in the spring when the
shoots are about 10 centimetres tall
we'll simply take a scalpel and just
slice it just at the top
of the tuber and sometimes you might
even find you get a piece of the root
we just remove those
lower leaves
and pop it into some prop mix it's as
simple as that simple as that
how long do the cutting stay in that pot
about four weeks till it begins shooting
uh and then up to eight weeks before
it's ready to repot so once it's filled
that container yeah usually if you pick
the tube up you'll see roots starting to
come out at the bottom um and that's
when we know it's ready
as if keeping this collection going
isn't enough
erin and cherie still find time to
create their own special begonia
varieties
yep this is one that we've made we
crossed this one here hannah
and fj bedson
so these are the two parent plants and
this is what we got in return
we call it lady b
come about uh our nickname for each
other is lady
and both our last names start with b
it just goes to show that lots of great
things start with b
b's of course but especially ballarat
and begonias
what do you like about begonias erin i
love the difference of color the big
flower and i love that every year is
never the same
well they're just beautiful flowers i
mean it's such a rewarding process to be
involved in
beginning from when it's just a tuber
and then watching it grow into producing
these spectacular flowers
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you