Revealing our best kept secret
THE new force behind the reformed Friends of Noosa Botanic Gardens Joan Cordell has a fertile plan to reinvigorate one of the area's greatest undervalued treasures.
With a band of appreciative Sunshine Coast council staff looking on last Thursday at a meeting to reform the FNBG, Ms Cordell outlined her priorities and found overwhelming support.
"We are in the business of taking this gorgeous asset and going to the next level of its development," Ms Cordell said.
"And we want to do this is several ways.
"The first and foremost is to have a regular and reliable team behind the garden maintenance. We need to be able to provide quite a deal of TLC in the normal gardening areas of weeding and planting and pruning."
Ms Cordell said there was also a lot of room for do-it-yourself people in the works program itself.
"We'll be looking at many of the infrastructure items in the gardens that need attention," she said.
"And we'll welcome any new ideas people who join our team have - we really want to put energy into a wide variety of skills which you have to develop this into an active, progressive group of people who get tremendous pleasure out of seeing what we are able to create."
But Ms Cordell said the FNBG would adopt a format that "brings a lot of fun and friendship to the group that gets together".
"We're not just here simply for hard work - we want to have a social organisation. You come along once a month or week, whatever suits you so you get to know each other."
And a primary goal is to help put the garden on the map through outdoor art and more simple measures like better signage and public awareness.
"We have a website waiting to be developed and we need a graphic artist onboard - we want to communicate with the community around us to bring a refreshing view of what the gardens offer," Ms Cordell said.
"I guess many of you have heard the comment 'where is Noosa Botanic Gardens?'.
"People often say 'I've never been there or I did go there once many years ago'.
"A lot of decline in interest centres around the fact that we don't have effective road signs to get you here into the gardens and it's a little bit off the track, but we're going to address that."
Ms Cordell said they hope to recruit local woodworkers to help set up the nesting boxes around the garden to encourage the already flourishing wildlife which goes well with the exotic and native flora.
And the FNBG will be looking to - with the help of Michael Hunt of council parks and gardens - to establish a new botanical system to transform a stroll through the park into an informative experience.
"Let's bring it up to the 21st Century, something to interact with for school groups and visitors while sharing botanical knowledge."
Ms Cordell said she wanted the gardens to become a focal place for tourism.
"Really at the moment it's on the fringes. How many people do you know who come to Noosa reference it as a place they want to go to?
"I think it could be far more attractive - to do that we have to have new facilities here to upgrade what we have to offer."
She said through her special interest in the arts, the gardens could become an "adjunct to the Noosa Regional Gallery" as a display area. "Also we have the Noosa Stone Sculpture Bequest Walk which is just beginning and offers an international connection to Carrara in Italy and that builds with our second installation going in on July 3.
"I'd like to see an artisans' curator to foster interest and we have so many crafts people here and we're not using this venue to display that."
But most of all she said: "We need a core bunch of enthusiasts to spark a real level of interest."
A formal inauguration meeting will be held at the gardens at 10am Thursday, June 14 to elect a committee and organise incorporation.
To help out in any way phone Carol Stamford at council on 5440 9180.
