The Botanic Gardens are an obvious favourite place to visit for anyone living in Sydney, being central, accessible, and generally fabulous. I am going to try and be specific about them, to divvy up the place into items/specimens/creatures and so on...after all, it is not somewhere you only visit once; why describe it just the once?
The Fernery is where I shall begin. Although insignificant on the outside and, to be honest, rather tatty on the inside, this conservatory contains an item of unsurpassed genius: an ironwork chair with a fern design.
Here it is:
I don't know who designed it or when as the Botanic Gardens Trust website merely says that the current Fernery was created in the 1990's on a site where previous ferneries have been and that it is a good place to get wedding photos taken....extremely informative.
When Daniel and I were last there we were fortunate enough to have the place to ourselves (although I might have relished ruining a few wedding photos). We reclined gracefully in the fern chairs, imagining servants would shortly appear bearing cups of Earl Grey and some tiffin, watching fish idle in the shadows cast by a Japanese-style bridge, breathing in the earthy smells of ferns uncurling and ripening around us. Sunlight dappled and danced through the glass ceiling and down through the fronds onto our eyelids which became heavier and heavier until...
Alas! It was but a short-lived idyll, too soon ruined by the advent of some pesky tourists and their even peskier children. But I can heartily recommend the place as somewhere to go when the woes of the world are too much and you yearn for simpler times...just sit in the fern chairs and dream...
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