Last week Laurie and I travelled down the New South Wales coastal highway to Sydney, taking a couple of days. One day we stopped at Coffs Harbour to for a lunch break and were delighted to discover the North Coast Regional Botanic Garden. It is a beautiful sub-tropical 20 hectare garden sited on a peninsula in a bend of Coffs Creek, which surrounds the garden on three sides.
We were surprised to see quite a number of Stag horn ferns platycerium, growing almost at ground level attached to small trees. Easy viewing for the visitors. This one was a little higher than many others.
I had never come across the Nun's hood orchid Phaius tankervilleae var. australis, before. It is an endangered endemic species on the eastern coast of Australia with the southern end of its natural range between Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie. It caught my attention because the flowering stems were about a metre tall and dense with strikingly coloured flowers.
The garden also has a quite large Japanese section with this pavilion projecting over a small lake.
L-R: Me, Julie and Laurie.
In Sydney we stayed with Laurie's sister (Julie) and brother-in-law (Alan) who, one morning, took us for a walk along the harbour side among lush green surroundings...
...and ended up at Tambourine Bay.
To ikebana:
In a recent class with my Melbourne students I had set the topic of "Disassembling and re-arranging" the materials. Jacqueline had brought some Clivia leaves and stems with orange flowers, Her very simple, bold arrangement was set in a clear glass dish.
I was interested to take this photo from directly above and realised that it simplified the ikebana even further making it look two dimensional.
Marcia used Umbrella Grass Cyperus alternifolius and a purple stemmed Euphorbia. Her design had a strong diagonal movement to the right side created with the stems. The flowers and leaves were used to create a counterbalancing mass in the centre and lower left.
In my ikebana this week I have used naturally dried materials only.
This came about by the unexpected find of a branch of Eucalyptus (probably Messmate E. obliqua) that had fallen to the ground, which was quite wet after recent rain. The striking thing was that the leaves had been "skeletonised" by some tiny black insects. I think they were caterpillars but were too small for me to see clearly.
I arranged the branches reaching horizontally to the right with a smaller mass on the left side.
In the small mouth of the bottle-shaped vase are three stems of Mountain Daisy Ixodia achillaeoides, a small white multi-headed native flower that grows in South Australia and Victoria.
Greetings from Christopher
27th September 2026
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