Floriade in Canberra 2023

This year’s Floriade has started in Canberra to beautiful warm weather, and an excellent turn out to enjoy the opening weekend, with 40,000 people coming to admire the gardens and other entertainments.

This year saw the return of the landscaped gardens to be a feature of the show, after a hiatus of over a decade, with the popularity of them proving to be a drawcard for the crowds. The idea of the gardens was initiated by TLA member Jarrod Poole and enthusiastically taken up by the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) to showcase both student imagination and Industry support for the budding designers.

In total there are five gardens on display, all designed by students of CIT, from both Cert III of Landscape Construction and Diploma classes of Horticulture. Four of the gardens were then built by local landscape companies, with the student designers being mentored and helped by the landscape companies to bring their ideas to life. The fifth garden being designed by a student was also then built by the second and third year Landscape Construction classes from CIT.

The landscape companies provided their services for free, including the extraordinary commitment to build the gardens at Floriade and showcase the student’s ideas and their own skills and capabilities to build to a tight timeframe and in a restricted space.

The student designers were given a brief to design to, and to follow this year’s theme for Floriade of “Wonderland”, with amazing details being incorporated into the gardens, the construction, the plant choice and in some fantastic details throughout the garden space.

To make the involvement more exciting, the gardens were then judged for a gold and silver judges choice award, and a people’s choice award running for the first three weeks of the show. The gardens were judged by Head Gardener of Floriade, Tim Howard, CIT Head of Department for Horticulture & Floristry, Julie Collins, and Geelong based landscaper and podcaster Joel Barnett. The results were then announced privately by Jamie Durie who spent an hour talking to the student designers and landscapers, and who expressed his real enthusiasm for what was presented. Jamie then announced the winners publicly on stage at a keynote address he gave to the crowds.

And despite the co-operation of local Industry and CIT, the gardens would not have been possible without the extraordinary support of some amazingly generous companies. With plants being supplied by Yarralumla Nursery, Alpine Nurseries, and Andreasen’s Green. With other materials being supplied by local companies Thor’s Hammer, Canturf, Rodney’s PlantsPlus, Stonehenge, Cool Country natives, Cinajus, and Aquaflo. All of these companies made a huge effort in sourcing and supplying materials to us, and it made the gardens the absolute showcases they are for Floriade.

And of course, the Landscape companies who mentored the students; Landculture, Revive Landscapes, ONE Landscape and Cool Climate Landscaping. With Cool Climate taking out the Gold medal and Landculture taking out the Silver medal. What all these companies provided to the students was extraordinary support and effort for these gardens. It was very much appreciated.

With planning already underway by the ACT government for next year’s show, we are looking at expanding our current five gardens to ten showcase gardens. So, come to Canberra and experience Floriade, which closes on the 15^th October. The organisers are hoping to achieve 500,000 visitors to surpass last year’s visitor numbers of 420,000, which is great exposure for the Industry and these designer’s starting out on their careers in Landscape and Horticulture.