CAMELLIAS, CONNECTIONS AND CULTURE

In this second part of our coverage on a recent visit by Botanic Gardens delegates to Japan, Sophie Daniel, Manager, Interpretation and Placemaking, reflects on the cultural significance of camellias –and how the experience will inspire interpretation of new camellia plantings at the Gardens.

Entering a Japanese garden is a magical experience. Traversing uneven stones and crooked pathways you look down, take a breath, check your step. This gentle imperative to slow yourself reveals the garden’s purpose – to bring you into the present and open your senses to new wonders that reveal themselves with each moment. There’s a deeply satisfying feeling of joyful anticipation and discovery that grows as you are drawn onwards.

This sense of connection to plants and place is a powerful thing, and something we strive to create through the Botanic Gardens’ interpretation and placemaking. With the exciting development of new camellia gardens well underway at both the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah and the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, the timing was right for a research trip to Japan.

In March this year, supported by the Clive and Lorna Backhouse scholarship, Marion Whitehead, Supervisor Ornamental Gardens and Nursery Mount Tomah, and I attended the International Camellia Society’s Congress in Tokyo. We visited some of Japan’s most significant camellias growing in the wild, in schools and botanic gardens, palaces and temple gardens. We spoke with people who tend camellias in gardens, forests and nurseries, and were inspired by the deep connection to nature that is inextricably entwined throughout Japanese culture, life and learning.

Yukitsuri and Camellia Garden of Excellence

In every community we visited, the value placed on camellias and other plants was palpable. Plants are everywhere, prominent in the design of public places and cherished in private spaces. Plants are exquisitely framed and presented as treasures to be admired and esteemed. Their ubiquitous presence emphasises an abiding cultural connection to the natural world – even in the very centre of the most frenetic cities.

Our first impressions of the northern city of Kanazawa highlighted this plantcentred ethos. In the chill of early spring, cycads were snugly swaddled in straw, snug against the winter winds, making strange sculptural forms along the city streets. Camellias and other trees were protected from the weight of snow with teepees of bamboo stakes and intricately tied ropes, creating a season-specific delight – yukitsuri, ‘hanging snow’. Even the hard stone walls of the Samurai district were wrapped with hand-woven reed coverings, softening the soundscape of the cobbled streets.

Travelling onwards, we were welcomed wholeheartedly by the community of Oshima Uki, eager to share their vibrant camellia culture. Oshima Island High School is the site of an International Camellia Garden of Excellence, the only school in the world to have this honour. Their prized camellia garden is tended daily by the students, who proudly showed us their rare and unusual cultivars. The passion and commitment were evident as each told a personal story of connection to their chosen camellia. It was a joy to see the new generation of islanders continuing the long kinship between people and plants.

Temples, shrines and ancient camellia groves

Following the congress, Marion and I were part of a small group that travelled to Nara, one of Japan’s ancient capitals. We were led by the Botanic Gardens’ Honorary Camellia Curator Stephen Utick and accompanied by several members of Australia’s Camellia Ark conservation society. Together, we were privileged to visit the inner sanctums of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines to see some of Japan’s most precious, ancient and revered camellia trees.

Nara’s Gokoku-Jinja Shrine was perhaps the most moving experience of our journey. The Shinto shrine houses an ancient grove of Camellia japonica. These trees are revered, imbued with supernatural spirits that lift them beyond the physical to the sacred realm.

Shinto is known as a ‘nature religion’ – it sees the essence of divinity within plants, places and natural forces such as winds and waters. This ancient religion forms one of the foundations of the connection and reverence for the natural world that permeates Japanese culture.

On our arrival, the priests led us through a cleansing ritual to prepare us, purifying our minds and spirits. Sitting quietly before the shrine as we were made ready to visit the sacred camellia trees was a beautiful and humbling experience.

A low wall bounded the sacred grove, and we stepped through a knee-high timber gate to enter. Standing among those spirit-trees, the soft dark earth underfoot, we were held gently by a green stillness, a profound sense of ancient and enduring life. What a comfort to know those trees stand in that holy place, tended by the priests for millennia, visited often by the local community to renew and strengthen their connection to the natural world.

Though far from that shrine, the Botanic Gardens offer the same invitation to our visitors: time for contemplation and rejuvenation. Space to slow our breath and untangle our thoughts. Communion with plants and nature – a fundamental part of being human.

Our research trip revealed so many significant stories to tell, unravelling the camellia’s ancient and ongoing role within Japanese culture. The interpretation in the new Botanic Gardens camellia gardens will be inspired by these experiences, engaging our visitors with the rich cultural context and connection between camellia’s ancient origins and their valued place in our lives today.