Migrant Gardeners in Brisbane: Celebrating an Ephemeral Heritage

Migrant Gardeners in Brisbane: Celebrating an Ephemeral Heritage

A number of unusualgardens nestle among the hills and dales in and around Brisbane. These are the gardens fulfilling the dreams and longings of migrant gardeners who have arrived in Australia for different reasons and at different times over the last fifty to sixty years, all eventually drawn to Brisbane for its warm climate and relaxed way of life.

Why are these gardens different to all the other gardens that make up the verdant richness of Brisbane? Can we recognise the work of a migrant gardener as we walk along the street or are there hidden stories awaiting to be told? This exhibition tells the stories of twenty migrant gardeners from ten cultural groups. All are intriguingly different and yet echo the same underlying reason why the act of gardening is so important if one is to settle in a new land.

Gardening as Dwelling
What is it that compels the migrant gardener to make these special places? To be a migrant gardener is to be imbued with a need to reconcile a cultural way of life from a land far away with a new land, often vastly different. Through making a garden one can begin the process of dwelling. Dwelling is much more profound than merely living in a place. To dwell implies to linger, to stay awhile, perhaps even to settle. Originally the concept of dwelling also meant to cherish one’s place and specifically to till the soil and cultivate plants in a quest to be at peace with oneself 1.

For many migrants dwelling in close harmony with the land has been a long tradition in their former countries. In such cases making a garden in the chosen new country usually means re-establishing what was left behind as soon as possible. In Brisbane, this was the case for the Italian and Greek migrants of the 1950s and more recently for the Fijian-Indians and Pacific Islanders.

Others have suffered the trauma of war, fleeing as refugees to live in temporary places until a new country can be found in which to dwell. The Vietnamese did not make gardens in the refugee camps in Malaysia, nor did the Somalians in the camps in Kenya. It was not until they settled in Australia that they began to create gardens to ease the experience of war and repression. There is a strong healing process in caring for plants, in responding to seasons, and in producing food.

Once the settling process begins and the unfamiliar environment of Australia starts to assume some qualities of the home country, then migrant gardeners often selectively assimilate those aspects of the new culture which are appealing. In Brisbane, this has commonly meant growing tropical plants so that mangoes and bananas are now juxtaposed against olives and figs.

A Special Heritage
This exhibition celebrates a particular type of heritage, the heritage of everyday ways of life across a number of cultures. Migrant gardens not only reveal different cultural practices, they also convey a range of migration stories, as well as embodying a precious heritage of plants and seeds. It is important to understand this heritage when so many of our traditions are being subsumed by an increasingly homogenised world, including media-driven garden makeovers.

The history of migrant gardens in Australia is a long one. Before 1788, migration was a way of life for many Aboriginal people where the whole landscape was a garden encoded into silent songs. After 1788, for the European occupiers, the garden was significant in creating a connection with the new landscape. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a continuous flow of people from various cultures, each bringing different ways of gardening. By the 1950s, with the massive post World War 2 migration program, the gardens of migrants became more visible. The Mediterranean migrants’ gardens were characterised by fig, lemon and olive trees, grapevines, as well as vegetables such as aubergine, courgette, cannelloni beans, garlic, chives, basil, oregano – few of which were growing in Australian gardens at the time. The back garden was a place where many extended family activities, such as bottling tomatoes and olives or making salami, could occur. The back garden was also a private place for community dancing and feasts.

By the 1980s, supermarkets in Australia were stocked with similar food to supermarkets in the migrants’ home countries, so there was not the same pressing need to grow food. Gardens became places where one could create other aspects of the country left behind, such as decorative statuary, columns and balustrades, topiary and richly ornamented cast-iron gates and fences. Gardens could also reflect different dreams and aspirations about Australia, particularly the idea that it was a tropical paradise.

By 2005, migrant gardens reflect a complex mix of Australian eras of migration, countries of origin, and stages in the dwelling process. As a result, they are an important aspect of Australian cultural heritage.

Given this, one would expect migrant gardens in Brisbane to be similar to those in Sydney and Melbourne. But they are not! There is something about the easy-going way of life in Brisbane, as well as the pleasant sub-tropical climate and good soils that has resulted in intriguingly different gardens. The sense of loss associated with migration seems less palpable. Instead there is a kind of joyfulness and exuberance in these highly visible gardens.

No longer merely quirky, eccentric, or hidden, Brisbane migrant gardens are a feast of cultural diversity. Featuring individuality and ingenuity, these gardens and their gardeners also reveal how the experience of being a migrant in Brisbane has changed over time.

The Chinese were among some of the earlier migrants to Brisbane, supplying the community with fresh vegetables from their market gardens from 1870 on. Unfortunately the Chinese were early victims of the White Australia Policy of 1901, many returning to China.

In the late 19th – early 20th centuries, a small number of migrants from Mediterranean countries came to Queensland, going to country towns or cane and tobacco fields. Later, some settled in Brisbane making gardens with extensive orchards. After the Second World War, the Australian Government invited many migrants from Britain and the Mediterranean to settle. The Greek community in West End with their small but highly productive gardens became more visible at this time. As well a number of Italian migrants settled in Brisbane, some in New Farm and others making larger market gardens on the rich soils found on Brisbane’s outskirts.

From the 1970s on, refugees from Vietnam survived their harrowing journeys to Australia, many gratefully settling in Brisbane. In the 1980s, political instability in Central America and Fiji resulted in more migrants adding to Brisbane’s cultural richness.

Later, refugees from war-torn Afghanistan and North Africa formed small communities in Brisbane. As well, some Pacific Islanders saw the opportunities that Brisbane could offer their large families. There were also many individuals whose adventurous spirit brought them to Australia, ultimately settling in Brisbane.

The gardens of these different migrants generally focus on edible plants, but they also include medicinal and mystical plants, such as in the El Salvadorian gardens. The Vietnamese gardens have a particular spirituality reflected in topiary compositions, some similar to those found in the Brisbane Vietnamese temples, others as inventive allegories reflecting the migration experience.

For the Fijian-Indians and Pacific Islanders, there is a culture of farming and community gardening. The Fijian-Indians, forced to leave their farms as a result of the mid-1980s military coup, have made gardens in Brisbane that reflect their Fijian farms as well as their Indian spirituality. The Pacific Islanders are also farmers, their collective yam plantations providing a moveable feast in the Brisbane landscape.

Loss of beautiful gardens resonates for the Afghani migrants. Their smaller gardens in Brisbane carry nostalgic references to their once substantial summer and winter gardens in Kabul and the surrounding Afghani landscape.

Recent refugees, such as the Somalians, have been less successful in creating gardens. After years in refugee camps in Kenya, many of their gardening skills have been forgotten. The landscape students at QUT helped some Somalian families by designing and building new gardens to provide healing and hope for a better life.

Sheer love of gardening has been foremost for other migrants. Making gardens in Brisbane has been a rewarding experience, whether it has been continuing a love of flowers, found in one colourful Irish garden or the fascinating experiments with Australian plants, either contorting them into unusual forms found in a Chinese-Malay garden or adding them to ancient recipes for rice wines, found in a recent Hong Kong-Chinese garden.

Celebrating an Ephemeral Heritage
For all the gardening passion, these gardens are an ephemeral heritage. These gardens will not last! The gardeners have not made them to be passed on as an inheritance; instead the gardens reflect part of the migration experience – an aspect of dwelling in a new country. The gardens may last as long as the gardeners themselves, but in many cases, the gardens are just one of a series of gardens, the gardeners have made. They are transitory cultural expressions and perhaps all we can do is catch their fleeting stories and attempt to understand their depth of meaning in the urban tapestry of Brisbane.

Helen Armstrong, June 2005

1. Bass Warner Jr, S.1987. To Dwell is to Garden. Northeastern University Press: USA.
Heidegger, Martin (1971) Building Dwelling Thinking (Translated by Albert Hofstadter) New York: Harper Colophon Books.