How a single park bench conversation helped define Australia's national identity
In short: When Maria Hitchcock campaigned to make the Golden Wattle Australia's national flower, the federal government seemed indifferent. Her success didn't come from a massive lobby, but from a five-minute chat with a visiting politician. This is a story of botanical persistence and the power of private gardens.
Maria Hitchcock’s work transcends traditional gardening; she manages a research-focused private botanic garden in Armidale, NSW. Unlike ornamental landscapes, her seven-acre bush garden serves as a scientific trial site for rare and endangered species. She maintains a national collection of correas, encompassing nearly every species and subspecies, alongside hundreds of hybrids. Her efforts even include the rediscovery of cultivars once believed to be extinct and the cultivation of C. reflexa var. nummulariifolia, which she collected from Flinders Island.
Her conservation philosophy is centered on the 'Save our Flora' initiative, which she launched in 2013. The goal is to encourage home gardeners to cultivate threatened plants, creating a distributed safety net for species with small populations. By growing these plants in domestic gardens, they gain a chance at survival; Hitchcock notes that plants thought to be extinct occasionally resurface in private collections. This mission is supported by her extensive work, including leading the Australian Plants Society’s Correa study group for seven to eight years.
Hitchcock's tenacity is perhaps best illustrated by her political achievements. In 1986, she campaigned to formally gazette the Golden Wattle as the national flower, a process that had stalled since before WWI. Despite facing skepticism from the federal government, she secured support after a brief encounter with Labor MP Graham Richardson on a park bench. Following the official ceremony on September 1, 1988, she spent four years lobbying state premiers and chief ministers to establish National Wattle Day on September 1, a feat she achieved through sheer persistence. For her environmental and conservation services, she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 2018.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Maria Hitchcock's work with rare and endangered native plants | My Garden Path | Gardening Australia
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