Module 5 - Section 3 段落填空 - Part 1 - Exercise 5

原文

So what about specific heritage gardens in New Zealand? The garden at the Pompallier Mission is one of the oldest in the country. It was established in the early 20th century using plants that were typical of that era. As part of the garden’s restoration programme Clunie re-used the plants that were already on site, adding to them with plants her team had identified from photographs that still survive of the early house and garden. When particular varieties and plants from the original garden were no longer available, she made sensitive and educated decisions about what substitute would be appropriate, based on the plants known to be in common use in that period.

Greg Rine is responsible for the ongoing maintenance and development of the garden originally established by Bernie Hollard, an enthusiastic plant collector. Rine has recently put up signs for the first time, written in an old-fashioned style, so that it seems as if Bernie Hollard himself is actually speaking as visitors go around his garden. That said, Rine recognizes that they have done some things at the garden, such as constructing the playground, that seem to contradict heritage principles, but it was necessary to attract visitors.

Paul Wynen is curator of the Eastwoodhill Arboretum, which contains the largest collection of Northern-Hemisphere trees south of the equator. The garden was started in 1910 by Douglas Cook, and includes many endangered species. As Cook watched what was unfolding in Europe, he saw his collection as a sanctuary for species that could otherwise be destroyed during two world wars. ‘We’re in the process of completing a 100-year plan for managing the arboretum,’ explains Wynen. One problem is that Cook wasn’t very organised, and many of the trees are too close together. To deal with this issue of overcrowding, Wynen has the task of trying to preserve the past collection while redesigning it in a more efficient way. Managing a plant collection of this nature is a sensitive matter because decisions will have consequences for hundreds of years to come. It may be that in future the arboretum’s most precious asset is not the living plants themselves. With worldwide threats to biodiversity, climate change and deforestation, it is the massive collection of seeds that can most easily be transported to affected parts of the globe.

Susie Fitzgerald, volunteer heritage gardener, has a different reference point for the ongoing development of the heritage gardens around the house of Katherine Mansfield , a famous writer. Mansfield only lived in the house for the first five years of her life; there is some information available relating to the property from the late 1880s, but almost no details about the garden. As a result, the board of trustees decided that they would create a late-Victorian style of garden, and are doing that by incorporating a lot of the flowers and plants that Mansfield wrote about in her books. So the garden reflects its literary heritage in a horticultural way. One big challenge is finding appropriate flowers, because so many have been cross-bred over time. For instance, the colour of petunias and other species these days is often not appropriate for what was available then.

In contrast, the relatively new South Seas Garden, showcasing ‘southern plants’, is all about expanding people’s horizons. It features a collection of plants from neighbouring islands, including tiny dots on the map such as the Chathams and Kermadecs, and underlines New Zealand’s wider geographical and horticultural heritage as a South Pacific nation.