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Award winning design

Designed by landscape architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean, with renowned plant designer Paul Thompson, the design for the Australian Garden couples space, light and scale with the clever use of plants and natural landforms to create a celebration of Australian flora and landscapes.

In 1997, the design won the Landscape Excellence Award and the Landscape Master Plan Award from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (Victorian and Tasmanian Chapters). It was also successful in the 1998 Australian Institute of Landscape Architects’ national awards by winning the Landscape Masterplan award.

In May 2006 the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne won three categories in the South East Development Architectural Awards:

The Australian Garden (Best Public Open Space)

The Visitor Centre (Best Public Building)

The Future Garden (Best Environmental Building or Landscape)

The Royal Botanic Gardens also won the Chairman’s Premier Award jointly for the above three entries.

Red Sand
Garden

Rockpool
Waterway

Dry
River Bed

Arid
Garden

Eucalypt
Walk

Exhibition
Gardens

A Bushland
experience

Visitor Centre Design

Award winning Kerstin Thompson Architects designed the $2.2 million Visitor Centre for the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne.

The Fitzroy-based architectural practice was chosen unanimously by a panel of judges for its innovative and elegant design.

Set among the treetops, the Visitor Centre will cater for visitors to both the remnant bushland experience of the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne and the planted botanic garden experience of the Australian Garden.

The weathered timbered building has been designed to give a tree top experience for visitors, offering a tantalising glimpse of the vistas of both the remnant bushland, the new, highly landscaped Australian Garden, and at the same time ensuring that the existing ecology of the site is retained.

The Visitor Centre will feature gallery space, a retail area, an indoor and outdoor café as well as an entry garden which takes visitors down a dramatic stepped and ramped deckscape and gently into the Australian Garden.

The judging criteria were stringent, focussing on function, environmental and operational efficiency, architectural impact, flexibility and design innovation.

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