"On average 11,000 people a week visit to enjoy themselves, relax, stroll, picnic, admire and learn."

"And what they are learning is a whole new set of guidelines for keeping back yards looking reasonable in prolonged drought conditions."

""The home gardeners of Brisbane have taken this waterwise message absolutely to their hearts," gardens curator Ross McKinnon says."

""We have Australia's best-labelled and I think best-maintained botanic garden and it is built on the same Brisbane schist as your garden and mine, and it's very minerally sustainable," he says. (Schist is crystalline rock.)"

""People can come here and look at the plants that are thriving and know they can have the same success.""

"When gardens staff recently dug a 2m deep hole "the soil was powder dry all the way down, there was absolutely no soil moisture left"."

""We'd need a hundred days with an inch of rain a day to get the ground really moist again," he says."

"Despite months of dry weather, plant losses have not been as dramatic as might have been expected."

""We're in survival mode," McKinnon says. Half a dozen mature conifers, normally found in cool temperate zones and "the type of tree I have seen in metres of snow" had died and 30 large tree ferns had succumbed."

""Tree ferns grow along creeks and they only live 25 years, and they were coming towards the end of their life. Don't worry for your tree ferns.""

"Queensland plant species make up only a fraction of the 30,000 different specimens on display in the 52 hectare area, including the world's largest collection of native rainforest species."

"McKinnon says a mature tree requires 360 litres of water a day and in the Botanic Gardens trees have not had such a supply for nearly two years. As a result, many trees, like the native figs, have scaled down their normal life cycles and are entering summer with less new-growth leaf cover."

"The Botanic Gardens, which is billed by the City Council as a separate entity, reduced its water bill this year by more than $100,000."

"One new water source is that which has been flushed through the city's fire hydrants as a routine operation. Instead of letting the water wash down a gutter, it is now collected and four large tanker loads a day are fed into the garden's irrigation system."

"Drilling has also produced a water source
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