The Birmingham Botanical Gardens Poetry Trail

While you are in the Subtropical House, look at the Spanish Moss and choose the best rhyme words from the list to fit the poem:

The Spanish Moss just won't behave - it makes the trees look old and hairy. You'd think that this tree needs a _______ because it looks so rough and _________

The words are haircut, scary, ready, old, shave, cave, fairy

This type of poem is called a quatrain. This means each verse has four lines and they usually rhyme as follows:

Does your poem above rhyme like that? Here is another quatrain:

This is a bit like Poem 1 'The Pitcher Plant' that is found in the Subtropical House. Read the poem. It is really two rhyming couplets, rather than a quatrain. Can you see the difference?

The Century Plant is not a very adventury plant. It takes a hundred years to flower, so please don't ask it to grow any slower because it can't

Which of the words in the poem is a made up word? Try making a word that would suit the plants in the Arid House.

The cacti looked very _________

Use letters that sound sharp and dry, like t, c or k.

Read Poem 2 'The Arid House' while you are here.
 
3 Poem 7 'Giant Redwood' in the Pinetum
Now follow your map to the next poem which is Poem 7 'Giant Redwood'. This time we are moving away from the the jungles and deserts to the forests of the American North West.

The poem is by a Giant Redwood tree, some of which can grow to becomethe tallest tree in the world.

When the poem says, " We eat our dead", this is because when a redwood tree falls and rots away, it provides the food for all the younger trees around it.
 
4 Poem 4 'The New Zealand Flax' in the Herbaceous Border

Use your map to go to Poem 4 'The New Zealand Flax'. Here you are next to Flax plants and the cloth that is made from them has a special name. In fact, it has two, which sound quite similar. Which of the names below belong to the cloth obtained from Flax?

rayon, lawn,nylon, cotton, linen, silk, jersey, cashmere

There is one more cloth from plants in this list. What is it? There are two cloths that come from animals. What are they? There is one cloth that comes from an insect. Which one? The remaining two cloths come from chemicals.

Your two names of the flax cloth started with the same letter, which is known as alliteration. Here is a poem to practice alliteration.

Choose words from the list below to fit into this poem, try to make them begin with the same letter as other words near them in the poem.

gunge, lumps, mushy, gobs, yuck, chewed-up, muck, pongy, mashed-up

You know what alliteration is, using the same letter to start several words in a poem. In Poem 5 which letter gives some alliteration.

What sort of word do you think 'oom-pah' is? What is special about it? It sound like what it means ( the sort of music played by brass bands, with a big drum  thumping and tubas going oom-pah). When you use a word like this it is called onomatopoeia.

Which of these words do you think are onomatopoeic?

cuckoo, grumble, splash, engine, redwood, whisper, hack

Here is another poem that has lots of onomatopoeia:

Bonsai are trees that have been grown to remain very small, by trimming them and keeping them in small pots. This is a skill devloped in Japan. So, if we are going to have a poem about a Bonsai, it should be a small one. Read Poem 8 'The haiku'

A haiku is a Japanese form of poem. It doesn't have to rhyme at all, but you have to count the syllables carefully, so that there are five in the first line, seven in the second and five again in the third.

This is another haiku:

Count the syllables to make sure that it is right. Can you hear how the words 'Johnny', 'silent','because' and 'nothing' all have two parts, two syllables? All the other words are one syllable each.

Try to write a haiku about the wind chimes hanging in the tree of the Japanese Garden.