The Geelong Botanic Gardens is a botanical garden in the city of Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The gardens are located within Eastern Park on the eastern outskirts of the central business district. They were established in 1850 and are the fourth oldest botanic garden in Australia.

History

The gardens were first set aside as a public space in 1850, taking up the whole of today's Eastern Park. The botanic gardens were later isolated to a fenced-off area in the centre of the park.

While the origin story of the Geelong Botanic Gardens can be traced back to as early as 1850, the land it was built upon has an even richer history. This history of the land dates back over 25,000 to 60,000 years ago when it was under the care of the Wathaurong people, an indigenous Australian community who are the traditional owners of the land.

Despite being cleared for public use in 1850, a committee of management wasn't formed until 1852, and its first curator wasn't appointed until 1857. The first appointed curator was a 19th-century explorer known as Daniel Bunce who tended to it for 14 years before his death in 1872. In that time, Bunce developed the land to contain a conservatory, a glasshouse, an aviary, and an inbuilt lake. Furthermore, Bunce planted a vast network of shrubberies along the carriageways to serve as a windbreak for the attendees.

The Geelong botanic gardens and its surrounding Eastern Park are listed on the Victorian Heritage Register for their vast assortment of plant life. Furthermore, the gardens also contain singular trees listed under the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) Register of Significant Trees, as well as some of Geelong's original heritage buildings such as the statue of Queen Victoria, the Cabman's Shelter, and the Market Square fountain.

To ensure all plant life meets its necessary survival requirements, the gardens house a large irrigation system capable of outputting up to 28 megaliters of water annually. This output is also capable of adjusting to the climate which particularly helps during the summer months depending on the incoming rainfall and temperature.

Despite this, the garden was still negatively affected by the drought. Every part of the gardens irrigation system was throttled to output the minimum volume of water needed for the gardens to survive, thus stunting the photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration processes in the plant life affected. This caused minor wilting, discoloration and even death in some specimens, but by and large the garden survived and now thrives to this day.

In 2011, the Australian government provided funding to the city of greater Geelong to develop a storm water treatment facility that would allow the storage and reuse of storm water. The plan was conceived in 2008 as an answer to the drought crisis of the current day and involved the capture of storm water throughout the region of East Geelong for redistribution throughout Eastern Park and the Geelong Botanic Gardens. This required a full restructuring of the irrigation system that would connect to the 250,000 litre storage tanks that would be placed at the edge of the gardens. While this reconstruction was underway, all plant life previously connected to the old irrigation system would be analysed to further improve the efficiency of the new irrigation system's design. The full restructuring of the irrigation systems commenced in 2013 and finalized in 2017 along with the development of the storm water treatment facility.

References

  • Friends of the Geelong Botanic Gardens