Forty years after it was reimagined on the site of Melbourne’s original medicinal garden, the Herb and Medicinal Collection at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria continues to offer visitors a living connection to the ways plants have shaped health, culture, food and wellbeing across generations.  

Established in 1986 with the support of the Herb Society of Victoria and the Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, the collection occupies a site with a much longer story. Its roots stretch back to the 1880s, when then-director W.R. Guilfoyle created a medicinal garden for the cultivation and study of plants used in traditional and contemporary medicine. The garden later became a teaching resource for pharmacy students from the University of Melbourne and, at its peak, featured hundreds of plants from around the world.  

Today, the garden invites visitors to look beyond the herb patch. Wandering through the collection can spark conversations about everything from wellbeing and biomimicry to cooking, fragrance and the ways different cultures have used plants for generations. 

While many of the original medicinal garden plantings have disappeared, several mature trees remain from Guilfoyle’s era, providing a tangible link between past and present. Visitors can still walk among stately specimens including Camphor Laurel (Cinnamomum camphora), Indonesian Cinnamon (Cinnamomum burmanni), Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis), Soap-bark Tree (Quillaja saponaria), Moonah (Melaleuca lanceolata) and Broad-leaved Paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia), many now more than 140 years old. Elements of the original path layout also remain visible within the collection.  

The collection itself has evolved alongside changing understandings of horticulture and conservation. As awareness of biodiversity protection, sustainable plant collecting and climate change has grown, so too has the approach to managing and interpreting the garden. The collection now balances historical plant use with contemporary conversations about conservation, responsible cultivation and cultural knowledge.  

For visitors, part of the collection’s appeal lies in its ability to surprise. Among the many plants on display is Japanese Pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum), a striking thorny shrub whose fruits, leaves, bark and seeds all have culinary and medicinal uses. Nearby, the Chilean Shrub Barraco (Escallonia illinita) releases an unexpected fragrance often described as reminiscent of curry or maple syrup, detectable metres away from the plant itself.  

The collection is also filled with familiar plants that reveal unexpected stories. Parsley contributes essential oils used in perfumery, Nettles can provide fibres for fabric production, and the lemon flavouring found in many commercial products is often derived not from lemons, but from the strongly scented Geranium Pelargonium ‘Mabel Grey’.

As the collection marks its 40th anniversary, its enduring value lies not only in the plants it contains, but in the stories they continue to tell.