Wurundjeri Biik | Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show 2024 — Suzannah Kennett Lister

In its near 30 year history, the International Flower and Garden Show (MIFGS), had never featured a garden acknowledging the custodianship and land stewardship of Australia’s First Peoples. This changed in 2024 with the presentation of Wurundjeri Biik. Designed in collaboration with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung elders and Andrew Laidlaw (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria), Wurundjeri biik highlighted three of the major plant communities found across Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country and acknowledged the traditional owners of Wurundjeri Country.

Building on the momentum of Wurundjeri biik, the project returned this year with an expanded footprint and focus. Spurred by Aunty Alice Kolasa’s statement that Wurundjeri people are people of the swamps and waterways, Wurundjeri biik baan, (Wurundjeri water country in Woi-wurrung language) was presented at MIFGS 2025.

Prior to the colonial settlement of Melbourne (Naarm in Woi-wurrung), Wurundjeri ancestors’ daily lives were inextricably connected to the rivers, creeks, swamps and marshes that wound through and across country. The waterways and their associated plant and animal communities provided seasonally shifting food sources, material for tools and clothing, shelter and sites of cultural practice.

Then, beginning with the destruction of the basalt ridge that separated fresh water from salt in the Birrarung (Yarra) river, the colonial settlement of Melbourne saw the region's defining waterways redirected, drained, paved over and polluted. The losses cannot be overstated.

We designed this garden by listening, and talking. We looked to the materials and shapes of country, both present and lost. We drew on stories of birds so bold as to steal children's dinner and nights carpeted with the sound of frogs, crickets and a chorus of birds.

Visitors entered the garden through a forest of paperbarks and were guided to a central gathering place, looking out across freshwater swamps and brackish marshes. Clay pans mottled by heavy drops of rain cracked and contracted across the week, gently hinting the shifting seasons. Paths of granitic sand and casuarina needles softened underfoot and reams of seagrass were woven through the planting, leading the eye from the rivers to the (metaphorical) sea. Middens of oyster and fresh water mussel shells sat nestled in the rushes, sand and saltbush.

Iuk (short finned eel), waa (crow) and white faced heron sculptures made with recycled materials by artist David Wong playfully enlivened the garden. For those curious enough to look skyward, Bunjil the creator spirit (wedge tailed eagle) could be seen silhouetted between the tree canopies stretching overhead.

Many hands and minds worked the smallest details into the bigger picture, from mosses in the fissures of rocks and branches to yabbie burrows in the Merri Creek clay. More than one hundred indigenous plant species and many thousands of individual plants were woven into an ephemeral fabric, briefly illuminating the complexity and beauty of the land as Wurundjeri ancestors lived it.

Designed by:

Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation elders, Andrew Laidlaw (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria), Suzannah Kennett Lister (SKL Gardens). Lead horticulturalist: Jack Dewhurst (Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne).

Supported by:

Aboriginal Melbourne (City of Melbourne), David Wong, Barb Martin Nursery, Briars Nursery, Eco Dynamics, Mt William Advanced Trees, Regen Nurseries, Bio Gro, Gardens at Night, Shapescaper Steel, Treasuring Our Trees, Ben Hutchinson Landscapes, Canterbury Landscapes, Earthwork Innovation, InStyle Gardens, James Berrett, Justin Purser Decorative Metal, Mr Goodvibes Audio, Harrison Baxter (Petrichor Collaborative).