When the cars go away, the Instagrammers will play.
As Sydney’s Jacaranda mimisfolia burst into flower, one lower north shore council is preparing to close two tree-lined streets to cars for six weekends to avoid dangerous collisions with visitors posing for photographs. At Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden, the jacaranda obsession sparks an increasingly frenzied rush on weddings as the trumpet-shaped blooms reach their purple prime.
Once allowed to flower in relative peace across Sydney, social media has driven jacaranda trees to attain celebrity status in the harbour city, as images crowd Instagram and TikTok from mid-October.
North Sydney Mayor Zoë Baker said the council’s tree team was monitoring blooms on McDougall Street in Kirribilli – one of the most famous spots in Sydney to photograph the flowers – to determine when traffic staff should start the weekend closures to keep the influx of visitors safe.
“People do get very excited, and they may occasionally attempt to take photographs and do things that would be dangerous when mixed with cars.
“Every year, there are at least five or 10 people who bring their own ladders, and take photographs from the top of ladders. There are people who dress in appropriate clothing and costume.
“There are very enterprising young locals who set up jacaranda lemonade stalls.
“It does then flow on to local cafés and shops because people have to walk past them to access the glory that is McDougall Street in November.”
The council will close McDougall Street, between Clark Road and Willoughby Street, and part of Hipwood Street, in Kirribilli during the day on weekends during the height of flowering season.
Baker said the intensity of blooms in Kirribilli created “a sort of mauvy haze around the foreshore” that drew tourist buses and visitors – increasingly via the metro – from Australia and overseas.
“Certainly year-on-year, more and more people do attend. Early signs are that there are people already there taking photos and enjoying them when we haven’t even closed the streets.
“It does bring a local optimism out, in that it does feel like it’s the harbinger of summer and towards the end of the year. It is seriously pretty.”
Royal Botanic Garden Sydney chief executive Simon Duffy said jacaranda season was a magnet for couples, who rushed to book spots near the flowering trees for proposals, weddings and photos.
“It’s fascinating. The jacarandas bloom every year, and every year we get an abundance of beauty, and interest from the community, and also weddings. We’ve had people asking us months or even years in advance when the jacarandas will be blooming.”
The garden has more than 130 weddings booked this spring, and 88 already booked for next spring.
“The first jacaranda was planted in the garden in 1857, so we can pick the timing pretty well.
“We’ve had a wet period, so we should see some good flowers. We should get a good season.”
Although jacarandas were native to arid parts of the Andes in Argentina and Bolivia, Duffy said they had been embraced as “iconic” to Sydney, and were cherished alongside native trees and plants.
“I think it’s the fact they are so beautiful for this one period in the 12-month calendar. They just bloom in such a spectacular way and create their purple carpet everywhere.
“It creates a living backdrop to people’s lives and experiences.”
Duffy said there was a lesser known exception to the purple jacaranda haze in the gardens: a white specimen – Jacaranda mimosifolia ‘Alba’ – that was planted in 1991.
Doctor and plant collector George Hewitt imported the seeds for the species, developed in Florida, to Australia in 1960. The original tree was planted and still grows in the grounds of Bellingen Hospital.
Other locations to enjoy the trees are streets in Strathfield, Woollahra, Camden, Parramatta, Sutherland Shire, Hunters Hill and Double Bay, as well as Circular Quay’s First Fleet Park, Newlands Park at Wollstonecraft and McMahons Point near Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden.
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