Anyone who has visited a large old garden and seen the twisted remnant shrubs and big old trees in it may wonder about their past and worry about their future. The lumps and bumps on the ground and half-buried lines of stone may reveal clues to previous garden beds and structures. Old photographs may show a house in a luxuriant setting where we see only remnant trees and shrubs, and evidence of many phases of rise and decline. The study of a mature garden is inexorably linked to the study of the plants grown within it, as much as it is to an understanding of the people who made the garden and those who altered it and recorded it in successive generations.

Vida Lahey is one of Queensland's best loved artists of the twentieth century. However, she is appreciated locally as much for her role in the promotion and teaching of art as for her practice. The work for which she is best known, ‘Monday morning’ 1913 (Collection, Queensland Art Gallery), became an icon of feminism from the 1980s, although it contrasts with her flower studies – the work that gave her a national reputation from the 1920s.

In 2010, a tree that is part of Maryborough's history was lost. It was the parent of what has become one of the superior macadamia varieties widely planted in the Australian and international nut industry. This Bauple nut, Queensland nut or macadamia tree was given the name ‘Daddow’ and this is its story.

When surveying the histories of plants under cultivation, one becomes immediately aware of the vagaries of shifting tastes. So it is with one of my favourite plants: the hardy croton, Codaieum variegatum. It was a popular hot-house plant in Europe during the nineteenth century, when colourful and variegated plants from the far corners of the world were all the rage. In the late part of the nineteenth century, these plants made their way to Australia, and were especially cultivated in Queensland. Even in sub-tropical Brisbane, plants can lose all their leaves in cold snaps during the mild winters, but further north, Queensland has a plant that can offer gardens a wide variety of colour and leaf shape. For a plant from the tropics, they are remarkably drought tolerant and have proved their resilience in both summer's heat and humidity, and our occasional extended droughts.