Environmental management

Botanic gardens have to confront environmental issues within the management of their landscapes but also provide leadership to the community on more sustainable practices.

At RBG Melbourne, unique challenges exist between our responsibilities to conserve the heritage landscape and to deal with the environmental issues facing the Gardens.

It is important to realise that the care of the plant collections and the living landscape is an environmental outcome in its own right. Many of these plants are rare or threatened in the wild. The landscape provides benefits such as evaporative cooling, fauna habitat and carbon storage.

Some of the key environmental issues and challenges facing RBG Melbourne include:

• climate change and its affect on the care of living plant collections and horticultural management
• water scarcity and the challenge of meeting the irrigation needs of the existing landscape
• identifying alternate water sources that meet the Gardens’ needs
• improving water quality and biodiversity of the lakes system
• reducing the risk of plants in the Gardens becoming weeds and spreading into natural environments
• protecting the valuable plants from new and emerging pests and diseases.
• managing soil sustainably – the foundation of healthy landscapes.

The Gardens has developed a number of strategies to manage these issues and meet these challenges.