Australia - South Australia - Adelaide Botanic Garden

Adelaide Botanic Garden, South Australia.

Beautiful, vibrant, alive and tranquil.

Sent by Sharyn from Adelaide, Australia.

The Adelaide Botanic Garden is a 51-hectare (130-acre) public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It lies on North Terrace (between Lot Fourteen, the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital, and the National Wine Centre) and behind it the Botanic Park (adjacent to the Adelaide Zoo). Work was begun on the site in 1855, with its official opening to the public on 4 October 1857.

The Adelaide Botanic Garden and adjacent State Herbarium of South Australia, together with the Wittunga Botanic Garden and Mount Lofty Botanic Garden, comprise the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia, administered by the Board of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium, a state government statutory authority.

From the first official survey carried out for the map of Adelaide, Colonel William Light intended for the planned city to have a "botanical garden". To this end, he designated a naturally occurring ait that had formed in the course of the River Torrens, in what is now the West Parklands. However attempts to establish a garden were abandoned owing to frequent flooding of the area. After a second attempt had failed, the northern bank of the Torrens, opposite the present location of the Adelaide Zoo, was considered, and it was here in 1839 that John Bailey (1800-1864), an experienced gardener and Colonial Botanist, made a third attempt, but no funding was offered. The South Australian Agricultural and Horticultural Society (formed 1842) and other groups continued to press for the creation of a public garden. The public were aware of the economic and scientific benefits of such a garden, already seen elsewhere in the British Empire. In 1854 the present site was recommended to the government by the Society and George William Francis (who had begun appealing to the Governor Sir Henry Young soon after his arrival in 1849 to establish the garden), and Francis was appointed superintendent of the garden in 1855 (read more).