On a chilly Autumn morning, a team clears weeds and prunes plants in an inner-city park. But this is no ordinary park with lawns and trees. It's a wildflower cultural garden at South Eveleigh in Sydney.
And overseeing the work is local First Nations businessman, Roman Deguchi. "It's a place where people can feel like they're going into Country and stepping into the bush a bit," he says. "A place like this in an urban area really highlights the unique beauty of indigenous plants," he says.
Roman Deguchi (centre) and his team. Source: SBS / Sandra Fulloon "And we take a lot of pride in bringing young people into the garden and showing them the uses and how special some of these plants are." Among those special plants, towering Gymea lily stems about to burst into giant red flowers.
In fact, Deguchi says nearly every plant in this park tells a story. "Gymea lily is an iconic local plant and one of my favourites," he says. "And it is significant to Aboriginal people because when it's flowering, it's whale season and whales are migrating.
" The cultural park in South Eveleigh. Source: SBS / Sandra Fulloon Planting wildflowers is a growing trend across Australia. Farmers are turning degraded land into wildflower meadows and some industrial sites are being rehabilitated with native plants.
"Wildflower meadows are common in the United Kingdom and Europe for their great floral displays and also to increase the number of pollinators in urban areas," Professor Nicholas Williams, an urban.
