Aussie Gardening

[Correa]

Any of you know anything about Jean Galbraith? Apart from the obvious books.

[Correa]

For those who are interested to learn about this quite unknown but significant gardener to Australia, I have included my introduction of my assignment to inspire you.

Jean Galbraith was born in 1906, in a tiny town called Tyers in Victoria (Figure 2); she lived in Tyers until 6 years before her death in 1999. She was a woman of many talents and passions, which she developed from an early age without the guide of educators. Been a ill child, and not being able to attend school regularly lead to much of her education been self guided, with the influence of her parents and her teacher Mr Elijah who lent her many books from the library (Galbraith, 1985). Through her own eagerness to learn and the influence of her parents who were passionate gardeners she became an eminent botanist, naturalist and conservationist. Jean was heavily involved with the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, for over 60years due to H.B. Williamson, a leading naturalist, who became her friend and mentor (Galbraith, 1985). She was also a fantastic writer which allowed her to express her knowledge of her passions concisely to the gardening public through The Age and The Garden Lover for many years. Her writings often showed a greater level of understanding of local and global issues far beyond and beyond the scope of gardening. This is most notable in the book Garden in a Valley (1985), however she also wrote many books that were described in the day as 'the glove-box bible' (Fletcher, 2009) Wildflowers of Victoria (1950) and the Collins Field Guide to the Wildflowers of South Eastern Australia (1977) (National libraries of Australia, 2008). She also contributed too many other people’s books and works identifying and labelling plants for the likes of Edna Walling. She also taught and mentored Joan Law-Smith, fortnightly via correspondence the rudiments of botany (Latreille, 1999).