I love sitting with an old tree like this
and imagining what it's lived through
and how the world has changed around it.
I also imagine its future.
What will it witness over the next hundred years or so?
How will it hold up as it feels the climate around it change?
All over the world,
policy-makers and communities are planning for
a climate-change-impacted future,
figuring out what needs to happen to make sure we have our needs met.
And cities with healthy green spaces are a very strong need.
So, what does Melbourne's future climate look like at this point?
Really good question, and a lot of that depends
on what we do in mitigation works.
Maybe one, two, but if it's three degrees warmer,
we're really looking at something like modern-day Dubbo.
Clare Hart is the manager of horticulture
here at the Melbourne gardens
and is one of the many people
ensuring the collections adapt fast enough to survive into the future.
So, Clare, long-term planning is a hallmark of a good public garden,
but with a rapidly changing climate,
I imagine that planning looks a bit different
to what it did 10, 20 years ago.
Yeah, exactly.
And, say, 10, 20 years ago, we were in millennium drought.
So, the millennium drought, from 1997 to 2009,
we did a whole lot of savings
and changing on our water management here
and saved about 40% use of potable water with great outcome.
But from that, it was, "Ooh, OK.
"What are the greater implications
"for our plants, or our living collections, from climate change?"
We commissioned a report with the University of Melbourne
so that we could understand what was happening
in our plants, or our living collections.
This graphic from their climate risk assessment
shows all the plants in the Melbourne garden,
with the red showing
the most at risk.
The data revealed
that in most scenarios,
many of the plants
grown today
would struggle in the future.
What will the gardens look like in 100 years?
Well, because we are transitioning a lot of our species now,
we will still have oaks and eucalypts
and our beautiful fig trees and palms as well,
so what we're essentially doing
is changing now in order to stay the same.
A great example is this white oak here.
So, a tree that we lost in 2019
came from a cooler climate,
so now we've replaced it with three climate-suited plants
that we know will be suitable for that warmer, drier climate
of 2070 and 2090.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
created a climate alliance
so that botanic gardens all over the world
can help each other and solve these problems together.
So, this plant is Clianthus puniceus 'Albus',
a really special plant.
It was gifted to us by our New Zealand colleagues to grow here,
important because we're growing it in warmer conditions
than it exists in back in New Zealand,
so a great way for them to see just how fabulous it is flourishing,
so they know that in those warmer climates,
when they do experience more of a warmer temperature,
that it's going to flourish.
Another important thing about it is that, as you can see,
it's got a whole lot of seed in it,
so we're duplicating this plant over here.
If they need the seed, we can also send it back.
Not all of the collections in the Melbourne gardens
will be impacted equally.
Amy Downie is the curator
of what's known as the Grey Garden,
a diverse group of plantings
on one of the gardens' hottest, most exposed slopes.
From cactus to palms to cerastium,
you can have anything here, and they're all different
but they all have this one thing, which is their grey foliage,
which connects them.
And the thing with grey foliage plants
is they're able to survive in really hot, harsh conditions
with not a lot of water.
So, some plants may have fine hairs on their leaves,
or another one, like this Eucalyptus macrocarpa,
has a powdery, waxy coating
to help it to reflect the sun and retain more water.
How do you see this garden changing into the future?
So, we're hoping that some of the plants that we've recently planted,
one being this beautiful Bismarckia nobilis behind us,
will eventually grow up and be the feature.
Another one includes a Quercus engelmannii,
which one of our horticulturists here
actually got the quercus as an acorn
from the L.A. Arboretum,
and so we're hoping that it's gonna grow up
and kind of replace the other trees
that are currently here at the moment
and be the main tree of the collection.
Yeah, so, this is...
Amy's taking me to see a tree
that she planted just a few years ago,
back when she was an apprentice here.
It's a Eucalyptus grandis, from southern Queensland.
So, this tree's gonna grow to be a big, beautiful eucalyptus
that's hopefully gonna provide a little bit of shade
for people spending time in the Lakeview shelter.
And it's very climate-matched,
so it's gonna be here for a very long time.
So, what sort of a time frame are we looking at?
Hopefully hundreds of years, 2090 and onwards.
This is the level of work that you're planning.
How does it make you feel to be projecting this far into the future
on things you won't be around to see?
Yeah, it feels really good,
'cause obviously we know about climate change
and it can be a super intimidating, kind of scary, overwhelming thing
to face,
so seeing the positive things that we're doing here
with our landscape succession plan
and knowing that we're planting trees
that are gonna be here for the next generation
fills you with a little bit of empowerment, I guess,
and makes the future feel a little bit more bright.
CLARE: It's about making sure that the legacy we leave
is there for my family, for your family,
and for those future generations
to enjoy not only what we see - the plants today -
but be able to really immerse themselves
amongst the canopy of the trees.
That's what I want to see for that future.
If you want to check your trees for their climate resilience,
there's a version of the climate assessment tool
that home gardeners can use.
The details are on our website.
Here in the gardens, and all over the world,
people are planning and planting
for a future with beauty, biodiversity
and good trees to sit beneath.