I discovered Dave's Garden back in March, when searching for information on a plant. I noticed then that there were many plants on the site without photographs and I started searching through my collection of photographs and adding my pictures to some of the vacant spaces.
I am more of a naturalist than a gardener, but have been seeking and photographing wild flowers everywhere I go since back in the 1960's. I now have a slide collection of over 4000 species of plants, together with 1500 species of animals and some 300 fungi.
I was born in England and my earliest plant pictures are all from England, but we moved to Australia in 1973, first to Hobart in Tasmania and then in 1985 we moved here to Churchill in Victoria.
I also spent a year on a teaching exchange in Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada in 1997-8, during which I explored the local flora as thoroughly as I could, before driving via San Francisco, across the USA to Maine, before flying on to England on the way back to Australia.
This explains the wide range of different plants that I have photographed.
Our garden here is 3/4 acre, which when we arrived was a bare paddock, except for 5 or 6 large Eucalyptus trees along the back boundary. I have been gradually adding more and more shrubberies and the garden is now becoming quite crowded, so that we seem to spend more time cutting back the rampant growth than planting new plants.
Most of my plantings are of Australian trees and shrubs, but we do include quite a lot of exotic species, especially roses, which are a favourite of my wife's.
I also work with our local Morwell National Park, and a couple of other groups on revegetation projects and I have been the major seed collector for all of these groups.
I also spend some of my time making marquetry items, (pictures created from wood veneers) and my designs are all based on my photographs of flowers and animals. I recently posted a picture of a coaster I made with a wax-lips orchid flower (Glossodia major) to the database. Herewith is a picture of another coaster, with a local Katydid as the subject (not a flower this time).
I have already greatly appreciated the exchanges I have already had with other Dave's Garden subscribers and look forward to sharing a love for plants with you all.
