'Let’s build the Sculpture Garden from the plants up'

Professor Kingsley Dixon AO has been the Foundation Director of Science at Perth’s Kings Park and Botanic Garden for over three decades and, as one of Australia’s leading restoration ecologists, the self-described 'heavy-duty scientist and passionate gardener' has sat on his fair share of federal committees. 'I’m always skiving off to look at places in Canberra – the National Arboretum, the National Botanic Gardens… I go to all the nurseries. There are some wonderful native plants you have on the east coast.'

For Dixon, the National Gallery of Australia’s invitation to help develop the Stage One brief for the National Sculpture Garden Design Competition was an important opportunity: a chance to embed conversations about biodiversity into the earliest stages of planning for the competition and new garden, as well as its care going forward.

Alongside experts in landscape architecture, art, design, architecture and education, Dixon had a very clear mission. 'My role was to open people’s eyes to the biodiversity of the country. It wasn’t an easy one! I was always so apologetic, at every meeting saying, "So, where’s the biodiversity?!" I think we have to specify it. Let’s build the Sculpture Garden from the plants up!'

Part of Dixon’s work was assessing what was already in the garden. 'It was very reflective of that period [in the early 1980s]. The symptomatic river gums, the lomandra, a few West Australian disease-resistant kangaroo paws... It’s the kind of shrubbery that would survive the eventual level of horticultural care. It became a park with sculptures, not a garden.'

The distinction between a park and a garden is an important one for Dixon. 'A garden should engage all the senses, not just the sense of tranquillity, of safety and shade… If it wasn’t for [Fuijiko Nakaya’s] fog sculpture there wouldn’t be a lot of botanical theatre happening.'

When Harry Howard and Associates envisioned the National Sculpture Garden in 1982 their original designs and botanical plans held much of this ambition. While their plans were never fully realised, in 2023 the National Gallery appointed a dedicated landscape manager to help care for and uplift those enduring parts of the Garden, particularly its endemic species, as well as the later addition of the Australian Gardens.

The bursting wattle currently in bloom is a reminder of how significant Howard’s inclusion of native plants in the Garden was at the time. Particularly because, as Dixon notes, the early landscaping of Canberra was largely about the taming of the continent. 'Native plants were seen as hostile, aggressive, to be subjugated; that’s how we viewed them, even though overseas, people have been mad about them since the 1850s. Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine, collected West Australian plants for her garden at Malmaison.'

Closer to home, the extraordinary complexity, beauty and value of Australia’s biodiversity and landscapes has long been championed by botanists like Dixon, who also recognises the central role of First Nations land care and knowledge of Country in this work.

'I think there’s a new appreciation that [garden design] doesn’t always have to be about colour and movement. It can be structure and form, too. That’s where First Nations knowledge is so important, understanding landscapes, not because they’re teeming with pretty flowers, but because they’re meaningful. And so things like the nearby grassland community in Canberra, with its native yams, suddenly become a great messenger of the land.'

The possibilities for artists and sculpture to be a part of this learning and celebration was another drawcard for Dixon when it came to working on the Stage One Brief, who relished working alongside artist and fellow advisor Janet Laurence. 'Janet and I just hit it off and to see the way she takes these scraps from the forest floor, as I call them, and turns them into art; suddenly everything becomes beauty and form but with a deep message.'

'I think that’s what people like Janet and others have highlighted, that textures, shapes and forms are all infinite within Australian plants. And that we can blend, mix and match them to create new beauty statements.'

Dixon hopes that these new beauty statements reflect the broader diversity of New South Wales and the Kamberri region, while also celebrating the fact that the Garden, like the Gallery, is a national offering. A huge fan of the waratah, Dixon also loves eastern banksias, the Sturt Desert Pea, Everlasting and grevilleas, which can be grown for every season and occasion. And if you add plants like these to any garden? 'Every native honeyeater will love you forever,' says Dixon.

Thankfully, the job of selecting plants does not fall to him. 'There’s 35,000 species and I love half of them. I wouldn’t know how to choose!' he says. What Dixon does know is that regardless of which species are selected for the new garden, a plan for its care and a management replacement strategy will be critical to ensuring it thrives and continues to grow for future generations to enjoy.

'There’s a common fallacy that you do nothing with natives and they keep looking fabulous. But natives are just like rose bushes. They still have to be managed, cared for, pruned, trimmed, given fertiliser, you name it.'

'Without that investment to enrich and develop the Garden in perpetuity, it will go the same way… as the old Sculpture Garden, reduced to a few survivors, and then it becomes a park again. So, it’s a commitment to that diversity. But if you do it right, you’ll sing from the rafters about how magnificent it is.'

That the National Gallery is committing to this revitalisation through the competition and plans for its ongoing care is a critical first step and for Dixon, a measure of its success will be visitors asking ‘what’s that?’ of every plant. 'I think we’ll have achieved one of the goals then, which is where the plants are part of the art of the Garden, not just the canvas on which the sculptures sit.'

The National Sculpture Garden also needs to be a reflection of our identity and not of any other place. Says Dixon:

'It needs to celebrate and respect Australia’s extraordinary botanical wealth. People will come from all over the world to see it and so it needs to go that next step, bringing great art into a great garden in a unique blend that you will see nowhere else on the planet. And it’s not because we’re trying to be unique. It’s because we are unique.'

For more on the Sculpture Garden visit here.