Australian Garden Stage 2

Following the journey of water

The Australian Garden design follows the journey of water from the red centre of Australia, along dry river beds and down mighty rivers to the coastal fringes of the continent.

The western side of the garden including the Eucalypt Walk, Gondwana Garden, Arid Garden and Dry River Bed takes its cue from the natural world. The eastern and northern extent of the Garden is contrived from more human ideas and images.

Water is the mediating element between these naturally and humanly derived gardens.

Water is the main storyteller in the Australian garden; it leads visitors through the Australian Garden, expressing the main design themes and the heart of our historic and future relationship with the Australian landscape.

In the Australian Garden Stage 1, the journey of water begins in the red desert heart of Australia – in the Red Sand Garden. Here in the dry, water is absent. Its journey continues: the Dry River Bed and the Ephemeral Lake Sculpture highlight the transient nature of water leaving the desert in drought arriving with unpredictable floods until it arrives in the Rockpool Waterway. In the Australian Garden Stage 2 the Rockpool Waterway becomes a River Bend at the River Walk.

Designed by Taylor Cullity Lethlean in conjunction with Paul Thompson, the Australian Garden expresses the tension between our reverence and sense of awe for the natural landscape, and our innate impulse to change it, to make it into a humanly contrived form, beautiful, yet our own work.

The aim of the Royal Botanic Gardens in creating the Australian Garden is to share with visitors the beauty and diversity of Australian plants. The Australian Garden is a place where you can explore the evolving connections between people, plants and landscapes. The Australian Garden is also a place where you can discover inspiration and information about how to use Australian plants in your home garden. The Australian Garden provides a contemporary and inspirational landscape in which to explore the Australian Flora.

River Walk

The first new landscape feature that visitors will encounter in the Australian Garden Stage 2 will be the River Walk.

Located at the conclusion of the existing Rockpool Waterway, the River Walk will be a broad promenade with views across a meandering ‘river bend’ water body. This area, comprising a large, curving, treed walkway of granitic gravel and a waterside section of timber decking, connects the Rockpool Waterway with the vibrant Display Gardens and Howson Hill. The River Walk will afford a generous public waterside space for gatherings, seating, functions, and entertainment and education programs.

The River Walk is one of several locations in the Australian Garden Stage 2 that will be used for public education and school group programs. The landscape design will incorporate waterside access that will facilitate instruction in aquatic flora and fauna, and ‘ponding’ activities for school students. A hardwood-floored amphitheatre with seating for over 150 pupils will provide an outdoor gathering space fringed by Australian plants and shade-providing trees. The amphitheatre will also provide a more intimate venue for a range of public activities such as smaller recitals, light theatre, and outdoor lectures.

Plants

• Tristaniopsis laurina, Water Gum
• Callistemon ‘Mathew Flinders’
• Eleocharis acuta, Common Spike-rush

Features

• Stepped amphitheatre
• Ponding deck
• Fantastic hub for young families
• Lots of seating under trees.

Home Selections Garden

Visitors proceeding northwards from the picturesque River Walk will encounter the Home Selections Garden. Dynamic displays will be on show here, utilising selections of some of the most visually spectacular Australian plants, including grafted, experimental and newly released varieties selected for their particular suitability to Melbourne-specific
growing and soil conditions.

The eastern section of this garden has research plots that will be used by Royal Botanic Gardens’ horticulturalists, and students.  The research in this area will highlight the role of botanic gardens in horticultural research and how this impacts on which plants we grow in our home gardens.

From here, visitors will skirt Howson Hill to reach the northern section of the Arbour Garden. From there they will enjoy water views to the Weird and Wonderful Garden and the Melaleuca Spits, on their way to the discoveries awaiting them in the Continental Edge Gardens.

Plants

• Eastern section cultivars
• Western section – research plots

Features

• High display value
• Research section will contain plants and trials that illustrate how the horticultural work of botanic gardens has impacted on the plants that we grow at home.

Howson Hill

Howson Hill, a major topographic feature of the Australian Garden Stage 2, emerges from a tranquil waterway north of the River Walk and is capped with existing rare and endangered Mallee Eucalypts that already reach a height of four to five metres.

A walk along the ridge line will provide access to these unique trees. The loosely defined path will culminate in a viewing platform affording sensational views across the Australian Garden and along the Melaleuca Spits. A pathway providing continuous waterside access will link the two sections of the Display Gardens in the ‘valleys’ adjacent to Howson Hill.

Plants

• In eastern ‘woodlot’ section multi-stemmed Eucalypts

Features

• A tranquil lookout across the Australian Garden 
• A great picture postcard location.

The Arbour Garden

Australian climbing plants and standards will fill this display garden with a tremendous number of plants for use in the home garden. This is the must see location for keen gardeners, visitors looking for innovative ways to use tricky vertical spaces in their garden and children and the young at heart looking to play hide-and-seek.

Views along the central pathway through the arbours will be a great favourite with brides or anyone looking for spectacular and unique portrait.

Melaleuca Spits

This evocative feature, reminiscent of Australia’s coastal regions, will form the transition between the River Walk, Howson Hill, the Display Gardens, and the Continental Edge Gardens. Layers of aquatic reeds, sand spits, and bands of Melaleucas will provide a striking vista from the River Walk precinct. Distant framed views of the Continental Edge Gardens beyond will draw the visitor northward.

Plants

• Melaleuca linariifolia, Snow in Summer

Features

• A stunning and iconic landscape recreated as a work of environmental art.

Continental Edge – Display Gardens

Located to the north-east of the Gondwana Garden, on the opposite bank of the Ian Potter Lake and next to the Melaleuca Spits, these Display Gardens will offer informative demonstrations of the use of Australian plants in home garden.

Each garden will provide practical ‘take home’ ideas for visitors. The precinct will include the How to Garden, the Backyard Garden, the Inside/Outside Garden, the Greening Cities Garden and the Seaside Garden.

A curving water body flanked by plantings on its western and southern banks will surround the Continental Edge Gardens, which will also represent the conclusion of the ‘story of water’ in Australia. This story, a major theme of the Australian Garden, commences in arid central Australia and leads to the urban landscapes on the continent’s coastal margins. 

At the far northern end of this precinct there will be a small kiosk and visitor facilities.

Plants

• Pleached Ficus microcarpa var. hillii , Hills Weeping Fig

Features

• The Continental Edge Gardens will provide a fantastic visitor hub in the Australian Garden.  This is the place to relax and unwind, picnic with your family or get your hands dirty exploring gardening in the ‘How to Garden’.

The Gondwana Garden

This unique garden will include a diverse collection of plant species from Australian temperate rainforests. A series of imposing hexagonal basalt columns inspired by similar naturally occurring structures will provide a reference to the volcanic activity of earlier periods in the history of this continent. Together, these elements will deliver an environment that supports discovery of the Gondwanan period of our natural history.

Plants

The Gondwana Garden will be situated to the immediate north of the Eucalypt Walk, to the south of the Ian Potter Lakeside Precinct, and west of the Allocasuarina Grove. Visitors arriving at the Gondwana Garden will discover a lush, abundantly planted garden representing Australian Gondwanan rainforests’ connections to the evolutionary history of the Earth and its biodiversity.

The planting plan will contain Gondwanan species such as Antarctic Beech (Nothofagus moorei), Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwilli), Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), and Ivory Curl Tree (Buckinghamia celsissima). Dry-tolerant rainforest genera such as Melia, Flindersia, Cupaniopsis, Araucaria, Ficus, and Lophostemon will also be included in the plant list.  The range of both Gondwanan and rainforest species has been carefully compiled by expert RBG botanists to provide visitors with experiences reminiscent of forests in those long-distant times.

Feature – The Basalt Columns

The Gondwana Garden’s design includes a striking series of natural hexagonal basalt columns that will reflect similar natural igneous rock formations in the Australian landscape, and provide a reference to the role of volcanic activity in the earth-forming of the ancient super-continent of Gondwana. Similar structures can be seen at the Organ Pipes National Park in Victoria.

The columns will complement the plantings of the surrounding dense Gondwanan forest environment. Together, this structure and the nearby plantings will create in the Gondwana Garden a vitally important component of the Australian Garden Stage 2 landscape, planting design and vision, while extending the chronological and thematic scope of future public education programs at RBG Cranbourne.

Exploring the Gondwana Garden

The Gondwana Garden will be a great place to explore the history of the Australian Flora and discover some answers to the questions:

• What makes Australian flora unique?
• How have ancient plants survived in rainforest pockets in Australia?
• What is the future of our precious rainforests? 
  

Eucalypt Walk

The Eucalypt Walk lies to the immediate south of the Gondwana Garden and celebrates the diversity in form, foliage, bark, smells and sounds that make up the unique Eucalyptus genus.

The Gondwana Garden and Eucalypt Walk extend along the western flank of the Australian Garden. Walking from south to north introduces subtle changes that gradually surround visitors with a more immersive experience, with canopy and understorey becoming more lush and enveloping.

Ian Potter Lakeside Precinct

To the north of the Gondwana Garden, a substantial water body and an associated community events space will be collectively named the Ian Potter Lakeside Precinct in recognition of the major grant made by The Ian Potter Foundation to the project.

Features – community fun!

Community events such as festivals, functions, live music and theatre, a farmers’ market, and cinema screenings: this large public events space catering for up to 1,500 people will look out over the water body, and act as a focal point for both education and entertainment.

Gibson Hill

Another prominent landscape feature, Gibson Hill, terminates views of the Red Sand Garden seen from the Visitor Centre. It will be cloaked with blue-foliaged Acacias to provide a visually stunning display. A winding path will provide access to the top of Howson Hill, where seating and viewing platforms will provide a place to rest with dramatic, elevated views to the Red Sand Garden and Rockpool Waterway.

Weird and Wonderful Garden

In the heart of the Australian Garden, this mysterious garden will focus attention on some of the stranger forms of Australian flora, including dramatic plants such as Doryanthes, cycads, Xanthorrhoea, Brachychiton, Flindersia and Livistona.

These plants will be juxtaposed with vaults of Castlemaine stone and water features to create a fantastic and surreal landscape. Adjacent seats and orientation facilities will ensure this becomes a special family and tourist destination.