The designers have spoken to community groups about how the building materials could be re-usedCredit:Derek Swalwell
This includes the hundreds of plants in the native bed running down one side of the pool, a pretty and voluminous garden created by designer and horticulturalist Ben Scott.
While Scott says he didn’t expressly think about salt tolerances when selecting the plants – the presence of three large leafy pin oaks meant shade tolerance was the key limitation – many of the species stand up to salt nonetheless. Scott’s inclusion of such plants as coast salt bush, Correa alba, pigface, Leucophyta brownii, Poa poiformis and kangaroo apple, points to what is possible in some salty spots.
As to where in the country salty spots are, well there is no one answer. High salt levels stem from a range of factors, which can vary from the natural to the man-made; the recent to the ancient. Applying too much fertiliser, irrigating with salty water and extensive land clearance that causes ground water to rise can all contribute. Some salty soils stem from having originated from the weathering of salty rocks or from having experienced ocean flooding. Sometimes it is as simple as being close to the coast.
While some farmers commonly measure soil salinity it is not high on the to-do list for most home gardeners, who might only notice they have a salinity problem when well-watered plants showing signs of water stress.
But sometimes you can also deduce it from the landscapes around you. I have a garden just behind a coastal saltmarsh and this wide-open, mounding tapestry of different species adapted to twice-daily inundations of tidal water has given me lots of planting ideas. Many of the saltmarsh plants, the rounded noon flower (Dysphyma crassifolium ssp. clavellatum), pigface (Carpobrotus modestus) and Bower spinach (Tetragonia implexicoma) for example, cope with the salt by being succulent. They can store fresh water inside themselves. Others, such as Small leaved clematis (Clematis microphylla) survive thanks to their small leaf areas which reduces the amount of water lost through evaporation.
Like the NGV’s bubblegum-pink pool, the whole ecosystem is a lesson in how sometimes even the most salt-soaked spot can feel lively and dynamic.
pond(er) is in the Grollo Equiset Garden at the NGV International until April.
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