A world away from winter, the Fitzroy Gardens conservatory puts on a show
All spots, stripes and psychedelic colours, crotons are not standard winter fare. Ditto flaming red impatiens and loud, florid coleus. But they are all growing full-throttle in East Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens.
These plants – as well as imperial bromeliads, dracaenas, figs and more – are filling the conservatory, which is currently so warm it is hard to keep your winter coat on. Step through the door of this glass-roofed, big-windowed growing space and you leave the world of leafless elms and bare-stemmed hydrangeas behind.
This tropical spread is the only one of the conservatory's five annual displays that is heated, which means the crotons (Codiaeum variegatum) are as lush and leafy as you would see in Indonesia or Malaysia and the New Guinean Impatiens hawkeri have the big, showy flowers you usually only get in a shady, protected spot in summer.
There are also shocking pink, red and white poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima), a shrub that originates in the tropics of Mexico. While these plants naturally develop their coloured bracts in response to shortening day length in winter (the ones sold at Christmas are forced), they never do like the cold.
Conservatories have always let gardeners play with the seasons – basil in July, year-round tomatoes, spring blooms in autumn. By bathing plants in sunlight but protecting them from the vagaries of what's going on outside, you can grow the wrong plants in the wrong place at the wrong time of year.
Glasshouses and conservatories have a long history but they came to the fore in 19th century England. They became especially popular in Australia between the wars when the public developed an appetite for exotic horticultural display.
The Fitzroy Gardens got its Spanish Mission-style conservatory – all stucco outside and statues inside – in 1930, while a steel and glass structure was imported from Europe and installed in Malvern's Central Park in 1927. An ornate cast iron extravaganza was erected in Bendigo's Rosalind Park in 1897 and in the early 1990s, a more minimalist one was built in the St Kilda Botanical Gardens. There have been lots of others too, though many have been demolished.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne has had a series of glasshouses ever since Ferdinand von Mueller became director in the 1850s. Its current tropical glasshouse – half of which was built in early 1900s and the other half in the 1960s – is so warm and humid that it perfectly mimics the feel of a luxuriant rainforest. Three times in recent years conditions there have been such that the titan arum – endemic to western Sumatra – has been coaxed into producing its giant, smelly, crowd-pulling bloom in downtown South Yarra.
Helen Tuton, assets coordinator, Melbourne parks and gardens, says winter is peak viewing season for the Fitzroy Gardens conservatory.
While this is one of Melbourne's most-visited tourist sites all year round, Tuton says the tropical display, for which the conservatory is heated to between 23°C and 26°C, has a particularly strong following.
It features up to 2500 plants and when the show ends in late July, most of these will be moved into the gardens' nursery where they will be "tidied up" before making another appearance – in a different design – in next year's tropical display.
Tuton says the current fashion for indoor gardening means the public is becoming more knowledgeable about indoor plants and so the conservatory's horticulturalists try to highlight the less readily available species.
"Once upon a time having fiddle leaf figs was unusual and people would say, wow, where did you get that? Now they are seen as run-of-the-mill," Tuton says. "Watermelon peperomia used to be considered quite exotic but I saw it in Bunnings last week."
What indoor growers might also notice is the perfect plant health in most of these conservatories. Being a closed environment, conservatories require extra vigilance when it comes to fungal infections and other diseases, particularly those encouraged by moist conditions.
But as a visitor you can just bask in the warmth.