On my recent travels, I found myself at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens in Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, Australia. Whenever I travel, I always try and find a public garden of some sort to visit. This post is all about my visit to these fine gardens, which I enjoyed immensely. The weather was lovely and cool by comparison to what I have got used to back in Sydney, with the day starting out cloudy with the odd small, very brief shower.

Garden history

These botanic gardens (along with the rest of Hobart) sit on the land once occupied by the Muwinina people, whose land extended up the Derwent river.

Tasmania was colonised by the British in 1803, with the land in question being grated to ex-convict John Hangan and his wife to ‘develop’, in this case turning it into a farm growing fruit, vegetables and cereal crops for the settlement that became Hobart. Eventually, the land was returned to Governor Sorell, who established this area as the main food production area for the colony and grew many crops that allowed the population of the colony to grow significantly in its first decades of existence.

The gardens themselves were officially founded in 1818, the second oldest botanical gardens after Sydney’s gardens. With the growth of Hobart, the landscaping and creativity of the gardens improved. Plants from around the world were shown, along with productive and commercial plants being produced and then distributed throughout the colonies.

Since 1818 there have been twenty superintendents looking after the gardens, with the gardens being influenced by various fashions from the Victorian period onwards.

Within the gardens, there are some historic features that may be of interest to more than just my fellow plant geeks. One of these is the Arthur Wall, finished in 1830. It was ordered to be built by Governor George Arthur (hence the wall’s name), who wanted a heated wall to protect tender plants and to extend the growing season for fruit trees planted next to it. The wall also kept people out and supported a greenhouse where exotic food could be grown, including Australia’s first pineapple. Within the wall are heated channels through which the coal furnaces sent hot air. This is the only wall of its type in the southern hemisphere and one of a few in the world.

There is also the Eardley-Wilmot wall, which is the longest wall built using convict labour in Tasmania. After it was built, it provided protection for the vegetable garden at nearby Government House.

There is also the gatekeepers cottage, built to house the superintendent of the gardens. It never got used for this purpose, its final use was as an administration building before being restored in the late 1990’s.

Entry into the garden

We entered the garden through the lower entrance gate, located on the Domain Highway. The other two entrances are the main entrance on the Lower Domain Road (where the parking is located) and the northern gate, located further along the same road.

After entering through the lower entrance, we walked up to the Eardley-Wilmot wall and walked through the archway below into the area containing the mixed borders and the rose arbour.

Tasmanian Community Food Garden

This area of the garden got me weirdly excited. I don’t really know why, but the fact that a botanic garden has plenty of veg growing in it is great to me. It continues the use of food production that has occurred on the site for the last 200 years. Today, it is an organic garden that produces four tonnes of food a year-this gets donated to Second Bite who distribute the food to those who need help within the Tasmanian community.

I was impressed by the size, and variety, of the pumpkins being grown there. They also had kiwi fruit, eggplant, tomatoes and kale among the crops being grown. There was also a banana plant spotted too.

Subantarctic plant house

This little building and its contents was my husband’s favourite little area of the garden as it is something that is unusual thing to see anywhere. Its walls contain the microclimate for plants from Macquarie Island. This includes plants like Cardamine corymbosa, Uncinia divaricata, Stilbocarpa polaris and Blechnum penna-marina.

The building was built especially for this collection of plants. Inside it is really cold and quite windy due to the climate control system used inside.

The Eucalypt woodland

I include these areas together as we spent a fair amount of time here sitting and chilling out under the trees. We also spent time in the Chinese collection, the pinetum and around the New Zealand collection.

In this rather large area, there are many interesting plants, including an example of an English Oak, Quercus robur, my favourite tree from my native England. There are many examples of Eucalyptus and Corymbia trees.

There are several things that I love about gum trees. One of them is the fact that the bark has different colours in it and there are wrinkles where the branches have a bend in them. You can see this in the spotted gum below.

In this are of the garden, it was nice to see some native trees as they aren’t usually much of a feature in public gardens here. While I totally understand why people make more of a fuss about plants that are from other countries due to their difference from your normal, the local species to where you live are still fantastic and should be celebrated too. It is nice to see this in the eucalypt garden and in the Tasmanian Native Plant Collection.

Native plants of Australia

Across the gardens, I found many native Australian plants that I liked a lot. Being from England, I think I’ll always have a fascination with these plants. Below are some of my favourites from the day.

Correa alba is a shrub native to eastern Australia. Its a winter flowering plant, making it popular with local wildlife

This lovely banksia, shown below, is Banksia marginata, also known as silver banksia. This is a native of South Australia, Victoria New South Wales and Tasmania. It is variable in its habitat and habitat, but reaches up to 12m tall, more usually 2m.

Now this plant that is sprawling over the now hidden wall is called Myoporum parvifolium. Its rather odd common name is ‘creeping boobialla’, something my husband found rather amusing as he walked past (though some would say he has never grown up)! It is another Australian native, being a rather hardy ground cover.

Another genus of Australian native trees I like is Hakea, although I only really see them in actual bushland. Individual species do have different sized fruit, but they all have the same general shape. This particular species is Hakea drupacea, or sweet scented hakea, a native of Western Australia that has white or pink flowers in autumn to early winter.

The Japanese Garden

This area is quite a pretty part of the garden. Japanese gardens are not how I would choose to garden at home, but I appreciate the formality and ideas behind these gardens. These gardens celebrate the relationship between Hobart and its sister city of Yaizu in Japan.

The French Explorers Garden

We came towards this area of the garden towards the end of our trip to the garden By this point I didn’t have much battery left on my phone to take many photos of this area.

The sculptural fountain, designed by Stephen Walker, is for celebrating the fact that the French did play a part in the discovery of Tasmania. Plants here are selected from a list of those collected by the first botanists to arrive in Tasmania.

The Conservatory

The conservatory is a building built in 1939. It houses a little fountain in the middle and several plant displays.

Other plants that I really liked

This section could easily go on for ages, as there so many plants that I could put into this section, but I’ll limit myself to a few.

These gazinias were bright and colourful on a cloudy day.

These red flowers are a new one for me and possibly slightly strange too-but I like strange stuff as it adds to the charm of a plant. These flowers belong to Tigridia pavonia or jockey cap lily from Mexico. I do love the bright red colour too!

I love a good bit of interesting bark on a tree, so here is some bark that’s interesting to me. It comes from a Pinus ponderosa, or the western yellow pine from western North America.

Important info

The opening hours vary by time of year, October to March is from 8am to 6.30pm and April to September opening is from 8 am to 5pm .

There is a restaurant and shop too, but I didn’t use either so cannot really comment on the quality of the goods sold.

There are plenty of pathways throughout the gardens, so those with limited mobility or prams are able to get around well.

If you want the gardens to yourself, get there around opening time as they are really quiet then-it was like walking around my own private garden!

Overall opinion

This part is easy, just because it is such a nice place to visit. I loved walking around this garden, for many reasons. There are a good mix of plants and different themes throughout the garden, which kept my interest throughout my visit. The day we went was also cool and overcast so perfect for a visit here. I would definitely recommend going if you get the chance.

References

https://www.anbg.gov.au. Accessed 17/03/24

HTTPS://florabase.dbca.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/12227. Accessed 17/03/24