Tea and Seed Stories - reflections on WED 2010 in the Japanese Gardens at Mt Coot-tha

World Environment Day event - Mt Coot-tha

This table of seeds, plants and other items was set up by Bettina Palmer, one of the long term Volunteer guides at Brisbane Botanic Gardens to demonstrate the seeds to be found on site at the gardens. Helping also on the day was another wonderful volunteer Judy Grimshaw shown above with a group of visitors.

This was the setting for 'Tea and Seed Stories' at the Japanese Garden

Bettina was my excellent guide earlier this year when I was getting familiar with the Gardens - click on this earlier post to read about the tour she took me on one rainy day in March!

 

This is a close up (click to enlarge for viewing) of the jewellery that Bettina is wearing which is one of her designs. She has specially featured as many seeds or natural items as possible. The large red ones come from Brazil - I will need to ask her for the name of it. 

Below: are a series of items that were on the table primarily to engage children in the task of connecting seeds to the related food items. However being a Sunday many passers by stopped at this table and all eyes were on the pomegranate, cacao beans and chocolate, coffee beans and lotus pods in particular. I did a post on the cacao bean (seed actually) here in March as well. You can see it growing in the Geodesic Dome for Tropical plants.

  

In the centre of the table you may see the chocolate next to the cacao beans which are encase in a  white, furry substance.

banksia seedpods and blackbean seeds - I spy other seeds but can identify them from here.

bunya nuts and coffee beans

macadamias with biscuits made from them.

Bettina also kept many children very busy with paper and textas drawing the seeds on display whilst some parents joined me in the Japanese Tea House for the story circle dialogue. She had a seriously busy day along with Judy and I am very grateful for their time on Sunday. These two gorgeous sisters didn't mind sharing their work with us.

Below are a series of shots from the tea house in the break between sessions. We had a well attended early session and also later session - so numbers were ripe for good conversation and the telling of stories. A number of people have commented since on the fact we had an extraordinarily diverse crowd - diverse in backgrounds - cultural, professional and community-wise. This lead to very interesting cross-connections on the day and the enthusiasm by many to do something like this again!

We had a magnificent day all round - with lovely mild temperatures, sunshine and an outlook that was blissful. We could see some passers by looking quite longingly at our gathering in this tea house.

And quite a few impromptu visitors joined us which was lovely as we had put our posters around so it would be known new-comers were welcome to participate.

The story circle was an ideal way to meet new people and be briefly introduced to each others stories, the thinking behind them, and where we have come from. Each person was given this introduction below and the reference to the UN fact sheet on Biodiversity. Read this May blog post to see more.