Floriade Garden Bed Designs

The Future of Flowers

Each year the Floriade garden beds are designed to reflect a new theme. This year’s theme, Floriade – The Future of Flowers, explored the possibility of tomorrow. Celebrating the beauty and wonder of mother nature and the arrival of spring, the garden bed designs each explored concepts such as diversity and time travel, or challenges we are currently facing, including climate change, sustainable living, and technology.

To get a real appreciation of what was on display in Commonwealth Park this year, view an overall map of the park to see where each garden bed was located and explore the details of the beds below to learn about the diverse range of blooms that were planted to create these intricate designs.

Garden Beds 1 to 5 – Conceptual

Garden Bed 1 – Expectation

This garden bed is inspired by expectation and is designed to show a road heading into a bright future through a beautiful field of flowers. In this design, two mirrored cubes reflect the garden and represent looking into both the past and future world.

Garden Bed 2 – High-Tech Wave

With the rapid advancements in science and technology, it is exciting to imagine a future where technology will change the world in unusual ways. The concept for this garden bed is inspired by a circuit board and electric current. There are a few exceptional bulb varieties in this bed, including the Tulip ‘Leen van der Mark’ with its saturated red petals and white trimmings, Tulip ‘Rococo’ with its frilled petals, and Tulip ‘Queensland’ creating a unique texture with its fringed faded rosy pink petals.

Garden Bed 3 – Diversity

Flowering plants are incredibly diverse. There are about 391,000 species of plants on the earth, of which about 94% flower. Spread across three garden beds this design celebrates the variety in plant species by using a medley of Hyacinths, Tulips, Daffodils, and Poppies.

Garden Bed 4 – DNA

We are always pursuing new varieties of ornamental flowers. Increasingly, genetic engineering provides a new set of ideas and approaches for the cultivation of new flower varieties. Genetic engineering has made significant progress in improving flower form, flower colour, flowering period, fragrance and vase life. This pattern represents the structures of the DNA molecule, the ‘double helix’. The design has been formed with red Tulip ‘Largo’ and bright yellow Tulip ‘Yellow Sun’.

Garden Bed 5 – Time Travel

Is time travel possible? It might sound like a fantasy, but bold steps are being taken to move towards travelling through time and space. The radial flower-shaped layout of this pattern represents a ‘time tunnel’ or a ‘vortex’. The colour gradient from white, pink, purple to orange-red conveys a sense of depth in the ‘time tunnel’. In this bed, Tulip ‘Saigon’ features dark purple blooms, mixing with a mauve ‘Tulip Blue Parrot’.

Garden Beds 6 to 10 – Smart Futures

Garden Bed 6 – Smart Cities are Connected

Smart cities are gaining momentum as a feasible way to solve urban challenges such as environmental pollution, traffic jams and energy shortages. Pairing devices and data with a city’s physical infrastructure and services can cut costs and improve sustainability. By using a mix of daffodils, the flowers have been planted to create a series of circles to represent smart cities. Roads connecting these cities have been created using darker coloured blooms.

Garden Bed 7 – Cloud Data

Cloud data computing technology is improving and becoming more accessible every year. Cloud computing is the delivery of ‘cloud data’ over the Internet to offer benefits including scalability, mobility, faster innovation and flexible resources. The pattern of this garden bed represents a ‘cloud data’ system using a wide range of blooms.

Garden Bed 8 – Smart Energy

In a smart city, the ultimate goal is to reduce pollution, save energy and protect the environment. The patterns in this garden bed are inspired by three different green energy sources: tidal power, solar power and wind power. In the ‘tides’ bed, the colour palette is blue, purple, orange and yellow to represent tumbling tidal waves creating energy. In the ‘sunlight’ bed, a variety of blooms combine to create a warm, dazzling mood. In the ‘wind’ bed, dark coloured flowers are used to form a central gust of wind.

Garden Bed 9 – Smart Agriculture

Smart agriculture is an emerging concept that uses technology to develop efficient agricultural processes that harness our natural assets, like the sun, to increase productivity, enhance crop resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This garden bed depicts the patchwork of an agricultural field, with several special flower species representing the different ‘crops’.

Garden Bed 10 – Smart Building

Smart buildings allow residents to use mobile phones to remotely control home appliances like air conditioning and lights. These intelligent systems create safer, more convenient living environments customised for individual residents. The flowers have been planted to create the shape of a house. The red outer ring in the pattern symbolises the impact of technology on our lives life, influencing almost everything we do.

Garden Bed 11 to 15 – Nature is Everywhere

Garden Bed 11 – Forest

Forests are complex ecological systems in which trees are the dominant life-form. They can develop under a variety of conditions and the kind of soil, plant, and animal life living in each differs according to the extremes of environmental influences. This garden bed represents the beauty of the forest illustrated by a big, beautiful tree. A mix of tulip and pansy varieties outline the main trunk and tangled branches.

Garden Bed 12 – Micro-Organisms

Micro-organisms play an integral role in nature, helping to keep health and order in the natural world. This garden bed’s pattern details a microscopic view of micro-organisms. Tulip ‘Strong Gold’ represents the micro-organisms internal structure whilst the external structure is represented with orange-red Tulip ‘Verandi’s thin gold-edged petals.

Garden Bed 13 – Worms

Worms play an important role in the life of plants, helping to increase the amount of air and water that gets into the soil and breaking down organic matter like leaves and grass into things that plants can use. The pattern and colour palette for this garden bed is inspired by wriggling worms and feature red tulip ‘Gerrit Van Der Valk’, tulip orange balloon and apricot-coloured tulip ‘Sensual Touch’.

Garden Bed 14 – Bees & Flowers

Bees and flowers have evolved together over millions of years, sharing a symbiotic relationship where both species benefit. The pollen produced by flowers attract the bees and provide them with food and the bees help to disperse the pollen to produce more plants. The shapes of the bees and flowers featured in this garden bed are created using Tulip ‘Apeldoorn’, Tulip ‘Maureen’ and tulip ‘Queen of the Night’. Papaver ‘Artist Glory’ has also specifically been incorporated to attract bees to this garden bed

Garden Bed 15 – Outer Space

Thanks to ever-advancing ‘space agriculture’ technology, a new process of rapid cultivation has been developed to create new and improved varieties of plants. This garden bed represents outer space with a mix of yellow tulip ‘City of Vancouver’ and tulip ‘Novi Sun’ illustrating twinkling stars, whilst a combination of tulip ‘Evita’, tulip ‘Muscadet’ and pansy ‘Waterfall’ are used to form the galaxy.

Garden Bed 16 to 19 – A New Climate

Garden Bed 16 – Winter

When the nights start to get longer and the days get shorter, winter is coming. This garden bed uses a cool blue and purple colour palette to highlight the cooler temperatures and winds of winter. Tulip varieties including ‘Ace Pink’ and ‘Saigon’ have been used to increase colour variety, while a range of Dutch bulbs including the ‘Iris Discovery’ add vertical interest.

Garden Bed 17 – Summer

In Australia, we experience long, hot summers. The colour and design of this garden bed take their inspiration from the heat waves we experience during this period and the beach waves we visit to escape the heat. The colour gradient in this bed has been achieved by using over 15 unique bulb varieties, including the large red blooms of the tulip ‘Denmark’ and tulip ‘Gerrit Van Der Valk’.

Garden Bed 18 – Spring

The pattern in the spring garden bed is inspired by renewed life, beautiful days and includes new tulip buds to represent the ‘heart’ of spring. Pink is the main colour used, comprised of Tulip ‘Angelique’s light pink peony-shaped fragrant flowers, tulip ‘Burgundy Lace’ with its fabulous burgundy petals, and tulip ‘Menton’ which has attractive rose-pink blooms with apricot edges.

Garden Bed 19 – Autumn

The ‘earthy’ colours of the autumn garden bed not only represent the fallen leaves of this season but also represent our land and the colours of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands flags. Tulip varieties include the yellow tulip ‘Strong Gold’, the red tulip ‘Ile De France’, the orange Tulip ‘Ad Rem’ and the black Tulip ‘Saigon’.

All garden bed images by Photox – Canberra Photography Services.