About
The Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan is the Australian native plant garden of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney and covers approximately 416 hectares, 60 minutes south of Sydney.
The gardens are designed to take visitors on an exploration of Australia's unique plant life with the Connections Garden being the premier Garden within the site. The four and a half hectare Connection Garden is a roofless museum demonstrating the way people and the natural world interconnect.
As spring hits there's a floral sea of pink, white and yellow paper daisies, native to Western Australia, in full bloom and the beautiful display is rarely seen outside of WA and is expected to draw plenty of shutterbugs with the sea of colour hitting social media.
With plenty of Instagram-worthy angles in the paper daisy display, influencers and want to be influencers flock to the display in the hope to out-do each other and capture a unique perspective of the display for there audiences. In a recent article in the Advertiser curator manager John Siemon said “We encourage our visitors to please not stand on the daisies because once they're damaged they're done for the whole season and they won't bounce back.”
With over a million daisies in full bloom, visitors have disregarded the signs and decided that their own social media accounts/feeds were more important and trampled the display. Whilst most adhere to the message and get their beautiful photos by crouching down next to the display, many have unfortunately disregarded the messages and trampled large sections of the display.
OVERVIEW
A brief snapshot of the problems currently facing the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan.
Click image to enlarge.
“A “perfect” field of paper daisies at the Australian Botanic Gardens at Mount Annan has been trampled by people taking “selfish selfies”,”
Please Don’t stand on us!
The Australian Botanic Gardens staff installed signs throughout the paper daisy display. The signs were placed at regular intervals and are bright to ensure people could see them and some in a variety of languages. The staff also went to the added trouble of adding markers to the concrete paths encouraging visitors to stand or kneel in certain locations to make it appear as though you were surrounded by daisies. The Australian Botanic Gardens created a hashtag #australianbg #springintoyourgarden to create an Instagram based competition for the most creative images.
The Online Presence
Search #paperdaisies, #australiabotanicgarden, #mountannan or #australianbg and you will find a plethora of images in which people have climbed into the daisies display in an effort to get the shot the are after.
Source: INSTAGRAM
“There is actually no need to trample the beautiful display, you can take amazing photos and selfies on the paths”
The Real Impact
The beautiful paper daisies on display are absolutely beautiful to look at and photograph, but what responsibility do we have to discourage antisocial behaviour and allow people to break the rules and go unchecked?
Over a two day period we watched countless visitors climb in and out of the daisies, seemingly oblivious to the fact they just trampled and destroyed section after section.
Click images for captions and larger images (Lightbox).
“Please Don’t stand on us!
We want to be here for all our visitors, so please keep to the paths”
The Aftermath… (4 Days)
2019 had been greatly impacted by drought, as such the paper daisies in the connections garden were a few days late from the expected September 1 opening… the first day of spring. Upon announcing the display on social media, instgrammers, photographers and visitors flocked to the gardens. It only took visitors 4 days to do this level of damage. The display was expected to last 4 weeks…
Mount Annan Instagram Influencers In Action
“We watched these two for 30 minutes, reading the signs, climbing in and out all the way through the display.”
“Since when have we decided that our own social media accounts are more important?”
“I saw posts on social media about the flowers, it looked like a bright carpet.
I want images that are different to everyone else. Yes, you can take images where the signs are, but the people that put them there are not photographers. I want to be surrounded by the colourful flowers, not next to them.”
Tracey Lim (Instagram Influencer)
IN The Media
"Selfish selfie’ Visitors trample botanic garden’s perfect daisies"
The Sydney Morning Herald - September 15, 2019
"Visitors ruin Australian Botanic Garden iconic paper daisy display"
Camden Advertiser - September 20, 2019
"Selfish Selfie' Takers Blamed For Ruining Aussie Flower Display"
LAD Bible - September 16, 2019
"'Selfish selfie' takers trample a 'perfect' field of native daises."
Daily Mail - September 15, 2019
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