Exploring a stunning festival focused on begonias | Garden Inspiration | Gardening Australia

Costa visits the big and beautiful begonias as part of the Ballarat Begonia Festival and meets the committed crew looking after them. Subscribe 🔔 Curator Peter Marquand has worked at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens for over 30 years, overseeing one of the biggest begonia collections is in the world. “We grow over 2,500 thousand of them so it’s a staggering number of plants,” he said. With so much colour and variation amongst the plants they’re hard to describe. This collection houses two types of begonias, the tuberous and the-non-tuberous begonia with “insignificant” flowers but with interesting leaves. The tuberous begonia also includes the pendulous form best suited to hanging pots as they naturally hang. “I don’t know of other plants that have that much variety, and they’re pretty stunning,” Peter said. There is a trick to creating such large flowers. The staff remove the female buds, so the plants don’t produce seed, instead putting all their energy into the remaining male flowers “The male flowers are naturally bigger anyway, and their purpose is to be really showy,” Peter said. While the plant originated from South America, Ballarat, one of Australia’s oldest and at one time richest cities, thanks to the gold rush, has been in love with begonias for more than a century. The gardens started in 1857 at a time when many of the nurseries were experimenting with begonias. “It was a natural progression for them to come into the garden’s collection,” Peter said. Some tips on growing begonias: For those starting off, Peter recommends the variety ‘Nonstop’, a tubular begonia that grows shorter around 200mm that is easy to grow and find. If you want them to thrive, make sure you grow them in a cool temperature, they don’t like the afternoon sun preferring a good morning sun sheltered from the wind. The two dedicated main growers at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens are Sheree Blood and Erin Brennan who have been growing begonias for over 20 years. When they’re not busy looking after the vast collection they also create their own varieties of begonia. Erin and Sheree crossed two varieties to create the aptly named ‘Lady B’ after their nickname ‘Lady’ and their two surnames starting with ‘B’. Erin’s tips on growing tuberous begonias: - Choose the right pot - make sure it’s not too big. - Use water sparingly or they’ll rot. - Use a free draining potting mix placing the tuber right on top, just under the soil. - Finish off by watering it in. - It should start to shoot in about 3 to 4 weeks Sheree provides some tips on growing from cuttings, with the best time in spring when they’re first shooting: - When the shoots are about 10cm tall take a scalpel and slice at the top of the tuber - Remove any piece of the root by gently slicing it off - Place into a pot filled with potting mix with added perlite with a tiny bit of slow-release fertiliser. - They should start to shoot in about 4 weeks and ready to be re potted at about 8 weeks. ___________________________________________ Gardening Australia is an ABC TV program providing gardening know-how and inspiration. Presented by Australia’s leading horticultural experts, Gardening Australia is a valuable resource to all gardeners through the television program, the magazine, books, DVDs and extensive online content. Watch more: Facebook: Instagram: Web: ___________________________________________ This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel. Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC’s Online Conditions of Use (Section 3).